◊ Cathela

I've done a full pass through the OP and updated everything that stuck out to me for patch 3.2. If anyone finds stuff I've missed, please let me know.

A few questions:

• Anyone have info on the ICD for the new Libram of Defiance? (chance of 200 dodge rating for 18 seconds on HotR) I'd assume it doesn't stack, but confirmation of that would be nice as well.
• The patch notes refer to a 15% increase in the agil->dodge% conversion rate, but Whitetooth's combat ratings thread still lists the old value. Has it been reverted, or...?
• Is the application of the SoV DoT dodge/parryable? I thought this was discussed somewhere but I can't find it now.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• frmorrison

The ret libram has a 45 second cooldown, so assuming Defiance has 45 is a decent assumption.

Agility still gives less dodge in 3.2, Whitetooth didn't have agility listed in the OP. There is a "ratingbuster" built-in in 3.2, maybe it will show the new agility conversion.

The SoV dot application can miss. It does so roughly as often as one would expect from spell resist. It cannot be dodged/parried.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

qixxin

As far as I can tell the increase has still been applied, but whitetooth has not updated. I did a small test on ptr just now to check:

Dodge completely naked = 9.9972991943359 = D1
Dodge completely naked + kings = 10.154237747192 = D2
Let b be the base dodge chance
Let a be the agility per dodge

so



thus

and with some re-arranging gives



Popping in the numbers gives me a = 59.87987711474
with 1/a = 0.0167001010720
Knowing this, we get b = 3.49429009784

So this strongly suggests that the agility per dodge is around 59.9. My results might be off by a little bit because the change in agility was very small (only 9 agility from kings).


Also, with regards to the libram, on early builds of the ptr when it was purchasable with money alone, I had a nearly 100% uptime of the proc, however I suspect it has likely been changed since.

 

◊ Cathela

... which is almost exactly what I got when I added 15% to the old number. Nice work!
It's there, but it's in the diminishing-returns table, so it's easy to miss.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Wrathblood

With the enormous EH multiplier fully talented AD is providing to paladin stamina, I would think its now worth including the Inscription of the Gladiator (+30 stam/+15 resilience) among the acceptable options for shoulder enchants.

 

Jackinthegreen

The issue with that is [Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle] provides avoidance and better uncrittable returns, and as such we are free to gem/enchant stam elsewhere. The only time I can see using it in PVE is already posted in the OP: Patchwerk's 2 minute kill. Keep in mind that resilience is getting a nerf to its lowered crit effect, and it was already below defense to begin with for tanks.

Edit: Speaking of the OP, the Nitro Boost code no longer links.

 

• frmorrison

30 Stamina is a valid enchant for all encounters and resilience's crit reduction hasn't changed (other things have). Using the resilience enchant means you only need around 536 defense to be uncritable (you need to remove 5.6% crit and Rawr can tell you if uncritable).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

◊ Cathela

Actually resilience was and still is better for strict crit-reduction than defense. Post-3.2, it's 94.3 resilience rating for 1% crit versus 123 defense rating. The reason why defense is "better" is because of the large amount of avoidance it gives you as well.

If my back-of-the-envelope calculations are accurate, the epic Hodir tanking inscription is worth roughly 0.8% full avoidance before diminishing returns (plus a tiny bit of block). After DR it might be something like 0.5% to 0.6%. The gladiator enchant effectively gives you the option to trade that for an extra epic stamina gem, which I don't think is a bad deal.

EDIT: And thanks for catching the Nitro Boosts glitch. I'm doing a re-organization of the whole post this afternoon and I'll fix it then.

Strictly speaking:

94.3 Resilience Rating = 1 Resilience (this has changed)
1 Resilience = -1% chance to be crit (this has not changed)
1 Resilience = also some other stuff (some of which has changed)

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Cathela

(Posting pats 2-5 of the guide here temporarily until I finish prettying them up for the TTT.)

Technique



Ability rotations

Because most of the abilities used in tanking are instant-cast spells that have cooldowns and trigger the global cooldown, it's natural to set up a rotation that allows you to maximize your activity in a stretch of time and lets you stay active without waiting on cooldowns to finish. By far the most common rotation is to interweave 6-second cooldowns and 9-second cooldowns; this rotation is variously known as 6/9, 696969, or other combinations of those two digits.

The 6-second cooldowns are Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous. Since the global cooldown is just a little less than 1.5 seconds, we can say that these spells have a cooldown 4 GCDs long. So if we lay out the rotation in GCDs, with one slot for each GCD, we can rotate these two spells like this:

(ShR) ____ (HotR) ____ (ShR) ____ (HotR) ____ (ShR) ____ (HotR) ____ ...

The 9-second cooldown abilities are Holy Shield, Consecration, and Judgement. Holy Shield and Consecration actually have 8-second cooldowns, but Holy Shield lasts 10 seconds so it's fine to let it spend a second off cooldown each cycle. Judgements have a 10-second cooldown by default, so one point in the Improved Judgements talent is needed to bring the cooldown down th 9 second. A 9 second cooldown is six GCDs, so we can thread these three spells into the rotation above like this:

(ShR) HS (HotR) Cons (ShR) Judge (HotR) HS (ShR) Cons (HotR) Judge ...

While the cycle looks complicated, it's easy to maintain once it's going. With a good display of cooldowns, you should see each ability finishing its cooldown just slightly before its spot in the rotation. I recommend setting up your hotkeys in a way that makes it easy to move your fingers through the cycle. (For example, I use 1-2-3 for the 9-second CDs, Q for ShR, and E for HotR. This lets me cycle easily through the 9-second cooldowns on one row of the keyboard and the 6-second cooldowns on another row, all within reach of the hand on the movement keys.)

One common misconception about the 6/9 rotation is that it locks you into a certain routine and leaves you no flexibility to do anything else or react to events. The important thing to remember is that maintaining the rotation shouldn't be your top priority; instead, the rotation should be what you do when you don't need to do anything else. The strength of the 6/9 rotation is that it's actually the fastest way to build threat, so that if and when you need to stop building threat and react to something else, you're more likely to have a large enough threat lead to be able to stop building threat while you deal with the situation.

When you get comfortable with the rotation (it doesn't take long, especially if you design your keybindings around it) you'll find that it actually improves your ability to do other things while taking. You'll know instinctively which cooldowns are available and which aren't at any given moment, you'll know exactly how to pick up the rotation once you're done putting out fires, and you'll be able to switch back and forth more easily between "building threat" and "fixing problems".


Abilities and Spells

Threat and Damage Spells

The primary means for generating threat as a paladin tank is the [Righteous Fury buff together with Holy damage. All special attacks for a prot paladin deal holy damage, so effective threat generation comes down to using the appropriate Holy-damage abilities for the situation.

Note that in addition to the 90% threat bonus to holy damage, Righteous Fury also provides a hidden buff that increases all threat you generate by 43%. (This is the same as reducing everyone else's threat by 30%, which is in fact exactly what it's intended to do, replacing the old Blessing of Salvation.) This works multiplicatively with the holy damage threat boost, so in fact Holy damage generates 172% more threat with Righteous Fury than without. Needless to say, this is a huge difference, and if you try to tank without Righteous Fury up, you'll notice pretty quickly.

[Shield of Righteousness] (ShR): A very large amount of single-target damage and threat for an extremely low mana cost. In single-target tanking situations, ShR will produce by far the largest portion of your threat, and should always be part of your rotation. In multi-target situations, ShR can be used to boost threat on individual mob that you may not have locked down. For example, if you pull a pack of 4 mobs with Avenger's Shield, the one mob that doesn't get hit will reach you first (due to the snaring effect) and you can compensate for missing it with AS by whacking it with ShR.

Because it generates a large amount of threat in a single attack, ShR is also excellent for "burst" threat to quickly pick up individual lose adds and other annoying mobs. ShR can be invaluable for situations where you need to pick up one and only one target (for example, when you need to leave other mobs untouched for other tanks to pick up.)

ShR scales with block value, so adding block value is a good way to boost your threat and your mitigation at the same time. However, as of the 3.2 patch this scaling starts to diminish once your (fully buffed) block value reaches 2400 and block value beyond 2760 no longer increases ShR damage. Keep this in mind if you're stacking shield block value.

The [Glyph of Shield of Righteousness] reduces the mana cost of ShR to next to nothing. Since mana is rarely an issue when tanking, this is generally not considered very useful, and there are other glyphs that will give you more value from your major glyph slots.

[Hammer of the Righteous] (HotR): Excellent threat against up to 3 mobs at a low mana cost, or 4 with the [Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous]. Damage per target is not as high as ShR, but total damage against 3 targets is greater than ShR damage.

In addition to generating significant threat itself, HotR also counts as a weapon attack against each target for your currently active seal. This is most effective with Seal of Vengeance, since it allows you to build and maintain full 5-stacks against 3 or more mobs at once without switching your primary target, but is also handy if you're using Seal of Wisdom or Seal of Light to regenerate mana/health. Situationally it can even be useful with Seal of Justice to interfere with caster-type mobs.

HotR will not bounce to crowd-controlled mobs, so you can use it with impunity around CC, as long as you don't throw it directly at a CC'd target.

Since HotR's damage is dependent only on your weapon dps, it scales with attack power, and consequently strength. Weapon speed is irrelevant for HotR's direct damage, but the effect of your seal does scale with weapon speed. A slower speed will increase the damage caused by SoC, SoR or SoV, and increase the proc chance of SoL, SoW, and SoJ. However, weapon speed is less important overall for threat than the weapon's dps.

[Avenger's Shield] (AS): Excellent threat against up to 3 mobs at a moderate mana cost. In general it makes a great tool for pulling packs of mobs, but it can make things difficult when you only want 1-2 mobs out of a larger group.

The 10-second snare effect is either a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of view. In the best possible case, it gives your group time to get CC taken care of, with the bonus that when the CC wears off the mobs are aggro'd on you, and not on the mage/warlock/whatever. In the worst possible case, it means you stand around for 10 seconds waiting for the mobs to get to you, during which time your ranged dps may be building threat but you probably aren't.

The Shields of the Templar talent adds a 3-second silence effect to AS. While this is most useful in PvP, it can also be handy for pulling caster mobs in PvE. Of course, the mobs will also be snared during the silence, so you probably won't be able to pull them very far. You can also use this as a spell-interrupt in a pinch.

In situations where you don't want the snare or silence effects and/or you only want one target, use Exorcism instead.

Like HotR, AS does not bounce to CC'd mobs.

The Glyph of Avenger's Shield doubles its damage but removes the bounce effect, limiting it to one target. This has situational usefulness, so by all means take it if you like it and skip it if you don't.

AS scales with both attack power and spell power.

[Exorcism] (Exo): Very good threat against one mob at range, at a moderate mana cost. Exorcism is a great tool for getting the attention of a single mob, either when Avenger's Shield is on cooldown, or when the secondary effects of AS are undesirable. Exorcism always crits against demons and undead.

The Sanctity of Battle Talent increases damage from Exorcism by up to 15 percent.

As of the 3.2 patch, Exorcism is no longer instant-cast, but takes 1.5 seconds to cast. This reduces its usefulness somewhat, mainly in situations where you'd like to build threat on a ranged target while taking melee damage from other mobs.

[Holy Shield] (HS): Reactive threat and mitigation. The threat from Holy Shield is not as important as it once was for tanking, but it's still useful as a threat builder, and it remains an important mitigation tool. Even in pre-raid gear, block values can easily exceed 1000, which represents a significant chunk of mitigation. Moreover, blocks generated by Holy Shield will trigger mana returns from Blessing of Sanctuary; it only takes 1-2 blocks for HS to pay for itself.

HS lasts 10 seconds but has an 8-second cooldown, meaning you can refresh it before it expires. In single-target situations, it's very rare for all 8 charges to be consumed, but it does happen on certain fast-hitting bosses. It's more common to use up all the charges in an AoE-tanking situation, but even with 3-4 mobs you won't often see HS get used up.

HS damage scales with both attack power and spell power. The amount of damage absorbed by a block scales with block value (obviously).

[Consecration] (Cons): AoE threat and damage. Affects all mobs within 8 yards of you for 8 seconds, with an 8-second cooldown. This is obviously a great tool for multi-target tanking, but it's also a decent single-target threat generator, and worth using if you have the mana for it.

Consecration will break most forms of crowd control (polymorph, sap, ice trap, etc) so take care with your positioning when consecrating around CC'd mobs.

Consecration continues to "tick" in the same location where you cast it. This can be useful for pre-consecrating an area that mobs will have to run through, and then moving elsewhere. The mobs will run through your consecration, take damage, and run over to you (assuming nobody else has built threat on them). However, it also means that once you've consecrated, you can't consecrate in another spot for 8 seconds.

The [Glyph of Consecration] increases its duration by 2 seconds, but also increases its cooldown by 2 seconds, so it still doesn't allow you to have multiple consecrations up at one time. Most threat rotations rely on casting Consecration every 9 seconds, so this glyph is generally not taken by prot paladins. (Its main users are Ret paladins, who benefit from having to cast Consecration less frequently.)

Consecration scales with attack power and spell power.

[Judgement of Light] (JoL), [Judgement of Wisdom] (JoW), [Judgement of Justice] (JoJ): Fairly low damage. The main point in judging a mob is generally not to build threat, but to keep up the JoL or JoW debuff for your group's benefit. Judgements are part of most standard rotations, but when non-standard threat abilities become available (e.g., Exorcism) Judgements are usually the first thing replaced. If other paladins in your group are keeping JoL and JoW up, you can feel free to ignore judging entirely if you like. (However, you may still need to judge to keep the Judgements of the Just effect active, if nobody else is providing a substitute effect, e.g., Thunderclap).

As of the 3.2 patch, JoL always heals its target for 2% of total health, and JoW always heals for 2% of total mana, so it no longer matters which paladin uses which judgement in a raid.

JoJ is rarely used in PvE, and virtually never in tanking. The only real use is for preventing trash mobs from "fleeing in fear", but there are many other tools for handling fleeing mobs, and mobs in raids almost never do this anyway.

Damage from judgements scales with attack power and spell power.

[Seal of Vengeance]/[Seal of Corruption] (SoV): This is generally considered the premier tanking seal, since a full stack deals more damage than SoR, and it can be kept active on multiple targets at the same time, especially with HotR (which applies the DoT to all targets it hits, unlike other Paladin special attacks). Although the tooltip does not mention this, melee hits on a target with less than 5 stacks of the DoT effect will still do holy damage based on weapon damage, in proportion to the number of DoT stacks present. E.g., a hit on a target with a 3-stack of the DoT will do 60% as much holy damage as a hit on a target with a full 5-stack.

The DoT will continue to tick for 15 seconds after the last time it was refreshed (melee or HotR hit). This can be very useful for mobs that have a threat-wiping ability. It also means that you don't lose all your dps/threat from the seal when your melee attacks are avoided.

The one disadvantage of this seal is that it takes a bit of time to "ramp up" its damage. However, when attacking with a one-handed weapon and using HotR, it's not hard to reach a full stack on a single target quickly, and other threat tools such as ShR can easily give you a threat "buffer" while the DoT effect is stacking. You may wish to use another seal (SoC or SoR) against targets that die very quickly, but many prot paladins don't find this necessary and are perfectly comfortable running SoV in all situations.

The [Glyph of Seal of Vengeance] adds 10 expertise when SoV is active, (i.e. -2.5% chance to be dodged or parried, so this means your chance to hit increases by up to 5%.) This applies to melee attacks and to HotR (parries of HotR will show up as "deflected" but it's the same thing), as well as to the 33%-weapon-damage hits from SoV. This means that if you have SoV up and fully stacked on your target, every autoattack and every HotR exposes you to two potential parries. Since parries by the target hasten its next autoattack, expertise can be very useful for reducing the potential for burst damage.

The Seals of the Pure talent increases damage dealt by SoV by 3/6/9/12/15%. This can be useful, but you may have trouble finding the points for it in a dedicated tanking build.

[Seal of Righteousness] (SoR): In most situations this seal is less effective than SoV, but it can be useful for situations with fast-dying mobs that don't give you time to build a full SoV stack. Effectively, SoR sacrifices steady threat for "up-front" threat; you may prefer to start a fight with SoR to help establish threat quickly and then switch to SoV for the long haul.

The [Glyph of Seal of Righteousness] increases the damage done by the seal by 10%. While this is a nice effect for times when you're using SoR, you won't be using SoR often enough to make this worth using a major glyph slot.

[Seal of Command]: This seal does slightly more "per-hit" damage than untalented SoV and it doesn't require time to "ramp up" like SoV does; on the other hand it doesn't have the DoT effect of SoV and thus does less damage overall.

In patch 3.2.2, SoC will also have a cleave-type effect in which it will deal the same amount of damage to two more nearby targets. This might potentially make it useful for tanking multiple targets, especially those that die too fast to build a good SoV stack on. As of this writing (Aug 20 2009) SoC can proc its chain-attack from each bounce of HotR, but based on statements by developers it's assumed that this will not be the case when the patch goes live.


Defensive and Utility Spells

[Righteous Fury] (RF): See above for threat information. With talents, this reduces incoming damage by 6%.

[Devotion Aura] (Devo Aura): With full talents, the armor bonus is 1808. This is the staple tanking aura, and it helps your fellow tanks as well as yourself. You'll be using this in 95% of serious tanking situations.

[Fire Resistance Aura] (FR aura), [Frost Resistance Aura] (FrR aura), [Shadow Resistance Aura] (SR aura): These are invaluable on resistance-based fights, because they dramatically reduce the amount of resistance gear you (and others) need to wear.

Note that Shadow Resistance Aura has the same effect as the priest Shadow Resistance spell and the two do not stack, so you should only use this aura in groups with no priest.

[Blessing of Kings] (BoK): This is useful for all classes/specs, but it's especially useful for a tank since the stamina buff increases total health for a fully buffed tank by 7-8% or more, depending on gear.

[Blessing of Sanctuary] (BoS, BoSanct):The stamina bonus does not stack with Blessing of Kings. The mana effect really only applies to Prot paladins.

This is generally superior to BoK for tanks, since BoS's flat damage reduction will increase survivability more than BoK's bonuses to strength and agility. However, when possible tanks will want both (in preference to BoM or BoW).

The Discipline Priest talent Renewed Hope provides the same 3% damage reduction to the entire raid (with much less work) and the two do not stack. Thus, in groups with a Discipline Priest present, you should only use BoS on yourself if you need the extra mana regeneration, and other tanks should always receive BoK.

Some developer statements have indicated that a 10% strength buff may be added to BoS in the near future (also non-stacking with BoK) in order to synergize with the new Touched by the Light talent.

[Divine Plea] (DP): Restores mana but reduces healing done with Holy Light and Flash of Light. The Guarded by the Light talent causes this spell to refresh anytime you hit with an autoattack. The Glyph of Divine Plea is generally considered mandatory for any serious tanking. Properly managed, this spell can be kept active for most, if not all, of a fight, constantly providing mana and mitigation. In effect, this ability with the glyph serves as a weak analog to a warrior's defensive stance, improving tanking ability while reducing healing power.

[Sacred Shield] (SS): With the Divine Guardian talent, this spell lasts for one minute, and the shields procced last 12 seconds. At normal levels of spellpower for a tank, each shield will generally absorb somewhere between 1k and 2k damage. This is something you should be using on yourself or on someone else when you're tanking; while it's really not reliable mitigation, it's still a very mana-efficient reduction in the damage you take and will save your healers some mana if nothing else.

As of the 3.2 patch, only one Sacred Shield can be active on a target at once, so if you're in a group with other paladins you should coordinate your Sacred Shield use. (In general you should let the Holy Paladins shield the targets they'll be healing so they can take advantage of the extra bonuses Sacred Shield gives to Flash of Light.)

[Hammer of Justice] (HoJ): With full talents this can have a cooldown as low as 30 seconds (as of patch 3.2.2). While most bosses are not stunnable, many normal mobs are, and this can be invaluable in controlling multi-mob situations. This is especially effective with caster mobs; with good timing it's sometimes possible to force a caster mob to go 10 seconds or more in between damage dealing. Another point worth noting is that stunned mobs can't dodge, parry or block, so in some cases stunning a mob can significantly increase the dps of your melee on it.

HoJ also interrupts spellcasting for 3 seconds against non-player targets, even on mobs that are immune to stuns. This is still inferior to interrupts for most other classes due to its low duration (for its cooldown) and the fact that it requires a GCD. So, it's unlikely you'll be using it as part of a serious interrupt rotation, but it can be handy for emergency use. (Because of the GCD situation, if you expect to need an interrupt soon, it's probably best to switch to a bare-bones rotation of just refreshing Holy Shield.)

[Seal of Justice (SoJ): This isn't used terribly often in PvE, but situationally it can be useful for disrupting some caster mobs a bit. Keep in mind that HotR has a chance to proc this seal on each target, so throwing the hammer at a group of 3 casters has a good chance of interrupting one or two of them. In rare cases you can use SoJ along with judicious use of HoJ and the silencing effect of Avenger's Shield to keep a caster mob largely shut down.

[Seal of Wisdom] (SoW): Occasionally useful for regenerating mana when you can forgo the threat of SoV or SoR. SoW can proc on each bounce of HotR, so a full 3-hit HotR with SoW up is usually mana-profitable.

[Seal of Light] (SoL): In offtanking situations where you absolutely don't need to do any threat or damage this can give your healers a very (very) tiny bit of help.

[Righteous Defense] (RD): In addition to casting this on a friendly target per the tooltip, you can also cast it on a hostile target, in which case it will take effect on that target's target. (This used to require a macro.) This means that usually you can use RD like a normal taunt and simply cast it on the mob you want to taunt. However, be aware that if there are four or more enemies attacking the same friendly you're not guaranteed to get the one you're targeting.

Regardless of how you target this spell, the 40 yard range applies to the distance between you and the friendly target you're trying to taunt mobs from. If a mob next to you is targeting a friend who's 50 yards away from you, you will not be able to taunt the mob with RD. (This is a case where you use Hand of Reckoning instead.) On the other hand, if a mob 50 yards away is targeting a friend who's next to you, you can use RD to taunt the mob whereas you couldn't use a "normal" taunt like HoR.

Righteous Defense shines in situations where one friendly is being attacked by multiple mobs, such as rescuing a healer from healing aggro, or saving an over-zealous AoE'ing warlock or mage. For best results, follow up RD with a threat-building move; Avenger's Shield often works well for this. The main drawback to RD, aside from the sometimes-awkward range restrictions, is the fact that it will taunt up to three mobs whether you want them or not. One situation where this can be especially problematic is when you're trying to trade mobs with another tank, such as on the Four Horsemen encounter in Naxxramas. This is one of the main reasons Hand of Reckoning was added to the game.

The Glyph of Righteous Defense increases its chance to hit by 8%, making it much easier to reach the hit-cap with this spell (see the stat reference). This can often be useful in hectic situations, especially when juggling multiple mobs or large numbers of adds. Many tanks feel this glyph is unnecessary, since neither RD nor HoR uses a global cooldown, and it's rare for both to miss consecutively, but make sure you can handle a missed taunt quickly if you plan to rely on this.

[Hand of Reckoning]: (HoR) This functions like the standard single-target taunts of other classes, and additionally does a decent amount of damage, which has the nice effect of solidifying your threat on the target. Use this in situations where RD's drawbacks make it unusable or problematic, such as:

• switching mobs with another tank
• taunting one and only one mob out of a pack, such as on a pull
• taunting a mob that is targeting a player more than 40 yards from you, or not targeting a friendly target at all.

Note that unlike RD, HoR does have a small mana cost. As of the 3.2 patch, the Glyph of Righteous Defense affects HoR as well, making this glyph a great way to help make both your taunts foolproof (along with sufficient hit rating).

Since RD and HoR each have separate cooldowns, a prot paladin can taunt twice every eight seconds, making a paladin ideal for controlling frequently-spawning adds.

[Divine Shield] (DS): Immunizes you to "all" damage for 12 seconds and clears "all" debuffs. (Quotation marks are used because there are in fact a number of effects in instances and raids which are not affected by Divine Shield, usually boss special abilities..) This is generally not something you'll use while tanking, because it causes mobs to de-aggro you, but it can be useful sometimes when off-tanking, or during pauses in tanking, especially in conjunction with Divine Sacrifice.

Because DS removes the vast majority of debuffs, it can be useful occasionally as a "get out of jail free card". It's helpful to have a macro handy to cancel DS so that you can regain aggro, e.g., "/cancelaura Divine Shield"

[Divine Protection] (DP): Reduces all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds. The benefit of this over Divine Shield is that it doesn't cause mobs to de-aggro. With talents, this has a 2-minute cooldown, so don't hesitate to use it when you think it's needed. Sometimes referred to as "shield wall" after the warrior ability it mimics.

[Cleanse]: Theoretically removes up to three debuffs from a friendly target, one each of poison, disease, and magic. In practice you'll virtually never get a three-for-one cleanse and only rarely will you get two debuffs at once, but this is still a very powerful debuff-remover because you don't have to put any thought into which kind of debuff you're curing. Because Cleanse is instant-cast, you can cast it while tanking without exposing yourself to extra damage, and unlike other "healing" spells it isn't hurt by Divine Plea. Hence if you've got a safe threat lead on the target(s) you're tanking, you can help out the raid/group's healer(s) a bit by throwing a few Cleanses.

Also worth noting is that Cleanse will only cast on a target that has a debuff; hence you can spam it on a target that you're expecting to receive a debuff with very little drawback. A good example of this is when you're tanking Steelbreaker in the Iron Council fight in Ulduar. Steelbreaker has a "Fusion Punch" ability that leaves a magic debuff on the tank. Since Fusion Punch has a cast time, you can watch Steelbreaker's cast bar and spam Cleanse on yourself as he's about to complete the cast, and remove the debuff only a fraction of a second after it's applied. This is strongly preferable to having a healer cure the debuff, since they'll be working pretty hard just to keep you alive against Steelbreaker's damage.

[Hand of Freedom] (HoF): Tanking often involves a lot of running around and repositioning; in fights with slowing or immobilizing debuffs, it can be very handy to be able to give yourself or someone else immunity to these effects for 6 seconds (or more, with talents). HoF will also remove existing rooting and snaring effects. A magic debuff that slows or immobilizes can be removed with either HoF or Cleanse. Cleanse has no cooldown, but HoF has the bonus effect of giving immunity.

[Hand of Protection] (HoP): This is generally not used for tanking, because like Divine Shield it causes mobs to de-aggro and switch targets. However it can occasionally be useful for clearing physical debuffs such as bleed effects. It can also sometimes be used to force a mob to switch targets in cases where a taunt has been resisted, but keep in mind that the mob will switch to whichever player is second on its threat list, which will not necessarily be you.

The more normal use for this spell is to protect non-tanks from attack, such as a healer or an AoE'ing caster. Also note that HoP will neutralize any physical damage transferred by Divine Sacrifice. This can be useful in cases where the raid is taking large amounts of physical damage (XT-002 Deconstructor's Tantrum ability, for example.)

[Hand of Salvation] (HoS): This can be useful for cooling off the threat of a particularly strong dps'er, or for forcing another tank to lose threat in a fight where you're trying to hand off threat without taunting. A good threat meter add-on is essential for getting the most out of this spell.

With the Glyph of Hand of Salvation, this spell will reduce the damage you take by 20% when you cast it on yourself. This can be very useful in fights where you need another "cooldown" to reduce the damage you take, as long as you have a sufficient threat lead.

[Hand of Sacrifice] (HoSac): Generally not something you use while tanking per se, since this spell redirects damage to you. However this spell can be very useful for supporting another tank, or for "tanking by proxy" if someone else is being attacked. Also, in situations where you're taking little or no damage, drawing some damage to yourself can be helpful by giving you a chance to gain mana through Spiritual Attunement. Be careful of course, and be sure that someone's actually going to heal you.

[Divine Sacrifice]: Effectively a Hand of Sacrifice on the entire raid, and like Hand of Sacrifice not something you'll often use while you're actually tanking. Damage-reduction or elimination effects will apply to the transferred damage, so if you use Divine Sacrifice and Divine Shield at the same time, all the damage transferred by Divine Sacrifice will effectively vanish and not affect anyone. In fact, if you have to use Divine Shield in a group, it's often a good idea to just go ahead and follow it with Divine Sacrifice unless there's a pressing need to do something else.

Be very careful when using this spell without an immunity or shielding effect, especially in 25-man raids. Raidwide damage effects can cause the damage from this spell to stream in very quickly. For example, XT-002 Deconstructor's Tympanic Tantrum ability damage each player in the raid for 10% of their total health every second. If your 25-man raid averages 20k hp with raid buffs, that's 50k damage per second; if you've got talent points in Divine Guardian, 20k of that damage will be transferred to you, in addition to melee damage transferred from the MT, etc. The only way to survive that without an immunity/mitigation effect would be to have healers ready to start casting big heals on you before the start of the tantrum.

This spell does not stack when used by multiple paladins. Many PvE-specced Ret paladins will have Divine Sacrifice, so if you have any in your raid make sure to coordinate with them to maximize the raid benefit.


User Interface and AddOns

A full discussion of UI design is beyond the scope of this manual; if you're interested in general information about UI design, addons and such, you can find a wealth of information in the User Interface and AddOns forum.

There are, however, several macros and addons that many tanks find useful.


Macros

Combined Taunt
By default, this macro casts HoR on your current target or a hostile target you've moused over. If your mouse is hovering on a friendly target or if you hold down Ctrl, it will cast RD instead.

"Unhittable" Check
This macro tells you whether your combined miss/dodge/parry/block chances are high enough to prevent a raid boss from ever landing an unblocked hit on you. Shamelessly stolen from this post by orcstar on the TankSpot forums which also includes some useful variations on the same theme.


AddOns

I haven't personally used all of these addons, so I can't vouch for them.

Threat Meters

A good threat meter is crucial for a tank, both for knowing how large a threat lead you have, and for knowing which DPS are most likely to pull threat from you.

Omen, currently in its third version, is probably the most commonly used threat meter. Previous versions of Omen were slow and frequently incorrect since they had to rely on reverse-engineering and other guesswork to try to calculate threat. Now that the game provides threat information directly to AddOns, Omen and other threat meters are much lighter and faster.

Classic ThreatMeter is a very lightweight threat meter that I've used happily since the WotLK release. It's a meter that was apparently built into the game at one point but then disabled, so the interface and appearance are all very clean.

Gear and Stat Analysis

TankPoints is a commonly used mod for evaluating tanking gear choices and different gear sets. The name of the mod refers to a value calculated to express your effective health and the change in it due to various gear switches; this mod will show you for any piece of gear how much your effective health will change if you equip it.

However, what's more important about this mod is the Calculator feature (accessed by clicking "Open Calculator" in the TankPoints mini-tab on the character pane). The calculator shows the hit table for a boss-level mob attacking you, and also allows you to play "what-if" games by adjusting your stats and ratings to see how they change your effective health and the hit table.

Pawn is a general-purpose gear-evaluation mod that lets you assign point values to various stats according to your preference for each of them and then scores a piece of gear based on that scale.

Awareness

Power Auras Classic allows you to set up customizeable onscreen displays triggered by events such as buffs, debuffs, and enemy spellcasts. This can be handy for displaying generally useful information (such as the time remaining on Divine Plea) or for fight-specific warnings (such as a huge graphic that pops up when Steelbreaker starts casting Fusion Punch.)

Need to Know is a lightweight addon that puts customizeable timer bars for buffs and debuffs onscreen.

Aloft replaces the default NPC health bars onscreen (i.e, the V-targeting bars) with cleaner, customizeable bars. This is handy if you like using V-targeting for off-tanking and tracking multiple mobs.

Tankadin2 is a small addon that signals a few important events like taunt resists, AS misses, and lets you check your hit table.

Blessing/Buff Maintenance

This is more a general paladin issue than a prot-specific concern, but I'm including these here for completeness.

PallyPower is probably the most widely-used paladin blessing "helper" addon. It monitors blessing durations, lets paladins in a raid coordinate blessing assignments, and partially automates the casting of blessings.

Many raiding paladins consider PallyPower indispensible, many raiding paladins consider it unnecessary, and much blood has been spilled on various forums debating this point. I'm not going to render an opinion here, except to say that if a guild or raid uses an addon to manage blessings, then the addon they use is probably PallyPower. Hence, if you're applying to raiding guilds, it's probably a good idea to have PallyPower installed and know how to use it. (Or something compatible; see below.)

ZOMGBuffs is a more ambitious addon that monitors raid buffs from all classes. It's compatible with PallyPower, so paladins using either mod can play happily together.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Cathela

Preparation



Talents

At the level of difficulty this guide is aimed at (heroics and upwards), any serious tank will have at least 51 points in Protection -- quite often more -- and at least 6 points in Retribution for Deflection and 1/2 Improved Judgements. Beyond that, opinions vary. Most builds go with at least 53 points in Protection to pick up every talent in the sixth tier and deeper (except perhaps the second point in Spiritual Attunement), and then use the remaining points to fill in personal preferences or raid needs.

This spec represents the talents generally considered "required" for tanking, with the remaining 12 points being fairly flexible and subject to personal preferences, the classes/specs of your companions, and the needs of specific encounters.


Protection

[Divinity]: Opinions vary on this talent. It's certainly an increase to the amount of healing your healers can do to you, but it's not always clear how useful this is. Since WotLK content (so far) generally tests healers with spike damage on the tank, in many cases this talent probably doesn't do a whole lot more than increase the amount of overheal. One thing that's certain is that it's more efficient on an MT than an OT, since the MT will have more healers.

Obviously if you're forced to heal on some encounters, this talent has extra value. The bonus applies to self-healing effects twice (see qixxin's post here), for a total of slightly more than 10% extra healing from healthstones, potions, bandages, Seal of Light, and Lay on Hands (which probably won't matter since LoH already heals you for 100% of your health.)

[Divine Strength]: This is a staple tanking talent; strength is a primary threat stat as well as a moderate defensive stat. Take this before Divinity; it belongs in any serious tanking build.

[Stoicism]: This is generally considered a PvP talent. Stuns do happen in PvE, but not frequently enough to merit this talent, and dispel effects are even rarer in PvE. If you can identify a specific encounter where this will help you, go ahead; otherwise don't bother.

[Guardian's Favor]: Also a mostly-PvP talent. If you find yourself with Hand of Protection constantly on cooldown and wishing you could use it more often, then pick this up. Otherwise skip it.

[Anticipation]: This is a must-have tanking talent. Not only does dodging save you damage, it also restores mana through Blessing of Sanctuary. This talent does not suffer from diminishing returns and doesn't contribute to diminishing returns on dodge from gear: Your dodge chance will always be 5% higher with this talent than without it.

[Improved Righteous Fury]: Essentially required. You'll always have RF up when tanking, so this is basically a permanent 6% across-the-board damage reduction.

[Toughness]: Another must-have talent. A 10% boost to your armor value is roughly a 5-6% reduction in physical damage taken before blocking is considered, and effectively a larger reduction in post-blocking damage. The reduction in snare duration is also more useful than you might expect, since many mobs will use rooting or slowing effects.

[Divine Sacrifice]: Using this while tanking is usually not a good idea, since you don't want to increase the damage you're taking, but this can be a useful ability during off-tanking situations, or during phases of a fight in which you aren't tanking anything. It's especially useful in conjunction with Divine Shield, since the two abilities together simply cause all the absorbed damage to go away. Divine Sacrifice can only absorb a total of 150% of your health in damage before expiring. However it appears this is a limit on the damage dealt to you, not the damage saved on other people, so using this while Divine Shield is active will keep it up for its full duration no matter how much damage it sucks up. Also note that the damage transferred preserves its type (physical, holy, fire, etc) so you can resist it as normal, and if you have Divine Sacrifice and Hand of Protection active on yourself at the same time, physical damage absorbed will go away and not count towards "overloading" Divine Sacrifice.

Knaughty: I'm a boss-whoring tank who never heals and is almost always MT instead of OT. I still have and really like this talent. I have it for only three encounters, but it is very powerful for those three (and they're hard - well, hard for 3.0, anyway):

• Sapphiron Air phase: You're not tanking, there's a lot of raid damage floating around. I've saved a wipe when we've had multiple healers ice-blocked (or even just one healer in 10-man).
• Malygos vortex & Phase 2: Again, you're not tanking (other than Lords for a bit at start of P2). Fairly powerful, I have saved people who stuffed up running into bubbles (or just taken a load off the healers when breath occurs).
• Sarth+3: Hand of Sac + Bubble w. DG = huge CD for Sarth MT. Just make sure someone else is carrying the adds for you for a few seconds while you do this.

(Commenting on an earlier version of this talent)

[Divine Guardian]: The increase in effectiveness for Divine Sacrifice is nice, and if you use Divine Sacrifice with an immunity effect it represents a pure gain in the amount of damage you divert. The increase in duration applies to both the Sacred Shield spell itself (60s duration with the talent instead of 30) and to the shield effect it creates (12s instead of 6). A new shield "proc" while an old shield is active will simply refresh the effect, but will not stack. So in addition to making your Sacred Shield more powerful, it also reduces the busywork involved in keeping it active. The combined effects make this a very nice talent.

[Improved Hammer of Justice]: Judgements of the Just will already reduce your HoJ cooldown from 60 seconds to 50, so if you have that talent (which you should) this talent will further reduce the cooldown to 30 seconds. Whether this is useful depends a lot on your playstyle; some tanks love to use HoJ as a stun and an interrupt frequently on adds and trash, and some almost never use it. Basically, if you find HoJ is always on cooldown when you want to use it, this is the talent for you; otherwise spend the points on something else.

[Improved Devotion Aura]: Strongly recommended. Devotion Aura is the aura of choice for tanking things that hit hard, and the extra 600 armor at level 80 is not insignificant. Moreover, this helps other tanks as well, and the healing bonus helps healers no matter who they're healing. This is one of the talents that you'll generally be expected to bring to a raid.

[Blessing of Sanctuary]: Core tanking ability and required for other core tanking abilities. See above under Defensive Abilities.

[Reckoning]: This is less useful than it was in TBC for two reasons. First, melee attacks and seals are a smaller fraction of threat generation than they used to be. Second, one of the virtues of Reckoning in TBC was that it worked with two-handed weapons as well as one-handers, but WotLK prot paladins do far more dps with a one-hander and shield than they ever could with a two-hander. With that said, it still adds some amount of threat, though at the cost of exposing you to more parries.

[Sacred Duty]: Must-have. An 8% stamina increase for two talent points is a ridiculously good value. The cooldown reduction on the bubbles is also important, especially for Divine Protection. Reducing the cooldown of DP from 3 minutes to 2 can dramatically increase its value.

[One-Hand Specialization]: Strongly, strongly recommended. Since you'll always be using a one-hander and shield (see comments for Reckoning) this is a permanent 10% damage increase. It's true that threat generation is not difficult these days, but burst threat is still quite important. And if your dps is about half of what the dps'ers in your raid are putting out, then this is still equivalent to a 5% damage increase for one of them, which is nothing to sneeze at.

[Spiritual Attunement]: This talent doesn't work with overhealing, so it provides mana that scales with the damage you take (provided you're getting healed, of course). With the new refreshing effect on Divine Plea, the value of this talent varies a lot with circumstances and personal playstyle. On the minus side, if you can keep DP up near-permanently you'll probably never notice this talent. On the plus side, keeping DP up permanently is one more thing you have to actively manage, whereas Spiritual Attunement is entirely passive so it can be a good value if you often find yourself too busy to pay attention to DP.

[Holy Shield]: Must-have, obviously. If you think you won't need Holy Shield for what you're doing, you're probably in the wrong tree to begin with.

[Ardent Defender]: Must-have. As of the 3.2 patch, this talent now affects attacks that bring you below 35% health, with the damage reduction applying to the sub-35% part of the blow. This removes the "leapfrog" effect which previously was the topic of much heated debate.

The "cheat death" function effectively serves as a second tanking "cooldown", which is useful for fights where you need, e.g., one cooldown every minute (you can use DP every second time, and trust AD to bail you out for the rest). When AD saves you from death, you'll get a debuff called "Ardent Defender" with a 2-minute duration that lets you know when it becomes available again.

Since the 30% heal from AD keeps you entirely within the range of the damage-reduction effect, it's effectively worth about 43% of your total health. One major advantage of this effect over similar abilities like a warrior's Last Stand is that it triggers automatically when you need it and only when you need it, e.g., there's no chance of "wasting" the AD heal.

[Redoubt]: Must-have. This is worthwhile for the increased block value alone, but the proc effect can also be nice if you don't have enough avoidance to block all hits with Holy Shield alone, or if you're tanking multiple mobs and your Holy Shield charges are getting used up frequently.

[Combat Expertise]: Also a must-have. The extra stamina alone is worth the price of admission, but the expertise gives a little extra threat and mitigation, and even if you can't rely on crits for threat they're still fun. Note that as of the 3.1 patch, this also affects spells, although this is unlikely to make a noticeable difference unless you find yourself healing in a Prot spec for some reason.

[Touched by the Light]: Recommended. As of the 3.2.2 patch, this talent increases your spellpower by 60% of your strength rather than 30% of your stamina. This will reduce the spellpower this talent gives to most prot paladins, but not by a significant amount. The spellpower from this talent will add perhaps 3-5% to your threat and also increases the power of your Sacred Shield procs. The crit healing effect has nothing to do with tanking, obviously, but it's still nice for situations where you're forced to heal -- even if that means nothing more than soloing.

[Avenger's Shield]: Must-have.

[Guarded by the Light]: Must-have. This talent allows you to keep Divine Plea active permanently while tanking or dps'ing, and a 6% reduction in magic damage is nothing to sneeze at.

[Shield of the Templar]: Must-have. The 3% damage reduction is worthwhile by itself. The silence on Avenger's Shield can occasionally be useful on trash mobs and on some spellcasting bosses.

[Judgements of the Just]: The increase in SoJ stun duration is mostly a PvP effect, and the reduced HoJ cooldown is nice if you're a frequent HoJ user. However, the real importance of this talent is the slowing effect, which is a substitute for Thunderclap or the druid/DK equivalents. You'll want this effect up in some form anytime you're tanking something serious. Bosses have special attacks on cooldowns that aren't affected by this, so a 20% reduction in attack speed isn't a 20% reduction in damage taken, but it's still a significant benefit.

The question that gets asked frequently is whether there's any reason to take this talent if you know you're going to regularly have a prot warrior, feral druid, or frost DK in your raids. The answer (in my opinion, anyway) is yes. Raids frequently have to split up, with tanks in different areas where they can't debuff each other's mobs. The value of JotJ is that it's yours, and you will always have it on whatever you are tanking, even if your prot warrior is on the other side of the room. Unless you're customizing your spec for a specific fight where you know this won't be a problem, it's best just to take this.

[Hammer of the Righteous]: Must-have.


Retribution

[Deflection]: Must-have for tanking. Like Anticipation, this doesn't have anything to do with diminishing returns; it's always worth exactly 5%, and parries provide mana through Blessing of Sanctuary.

[Benediction]: All tanking spells are instant-cast, so this basically stretches your mana bar 10% further. Generally speaking, mana shouldn't be a significant enough issue when tanking to make this talent really necessary. If you've got 2/2 Spiritual Attunement and you're still frequently running low on mana, you might want to invest some points here, but otherwise it's probably not worth it.

[Improved Judgement]: One point is a must-have because the optimal ability rotations require a judgement every 9 seconds.. The second point is a matter of personal taste.

[Heart of the Crusader]: Not a tanking talent, but if you run with a smaller group and don't have a Ret paladin, this can be a nice dps boost for the raid. Even in larger raids it can be nice to be able to apply your own HotC debuff for situations where you're tanking one target while your Ret paladin(s) dps another.

[Improved Blessing of Might]: Also not a tanking talent. However, depending on the composition of your raid you may find yourself often casting BoM on melee dps and hunters. If so, this can be a nice dps boost for them.

[Vindication]: As of the 3.2 patch, the AP reduction provided by this talent is equivalent to a fully talented warrior Demo Shout, a feral druid Demo Roar, or a fully talented warlock Curse of Weakness, and does not stack with those effects. Hence this talent can substitute for those. Because this effect is completely passive and "free" of a cost in resources, damage, or time/attention, in many ways it's preferable to those effects. Many tanks take this talent for reasons similar to those discussed above for Judgements of the Just.

[Conviction]: Not really necessary in any way, but big ShR crits can be a lot of fun if you have the points to blow. Also effects spells, so this can be handy if you end up healing frequently.

[Pursuit of Justice]: Very very nice to have if you can get it. Tanking frequently involves moving, repositioning mobs, dodging fire, etc, and a permanent run-speed bonus is a very nice thing. PvE mobs also often have disarm abilities, and the reduction in duration is nice since you can't HotR while disarmed. This talent doesn't stack with gear enchants that do the same things.

[Sanctity of Battle]: A nice talent if you're this deep in Ret. One point in this is always better than one point in Conviction, since it does everything Conviction does and more.

[Crusade]: This talent is a flat 3% damage increase, and against many many raid mobs a 6% increase. Nice if you can get it.


Holy

[Seals of the Pure]: This is not a huge increase in damage, but it's not trivial either, especially with the new weapon-damage component of SoV. A useful talent, but it can be difficult to find the points for it in a standard tanking build.

[Unyielding Faith]: Not a huge deal, but it's nice, and if you're here anyway with points to burn it's not a bad choice.

[Aura Mastery]: Note that the doubling effect doesn't apply to talents that improve auras; hence if you use it with Devotion Aura for example, you'll only get the base 1205 extra armor, even if you have the Improved Devotion Aura talent. Its real use is with resistance auras; on Hodir for example it can be handy to be able to give the entire raid an extra 130 frost resistance for 10 seconds during his Frozen Blows.

[Improved Lay on Hands]: This is a very nice talent from a tanking perspective. With full talent points, it's a 20% reduction to physical damage. Effectively this turns LoH into a kind of stackable mini-shieldwall. With the appropriate glyph you can reduce the cooldown to 11 minutes, and it can be cast on other tanks as well. Potentially very useful if you find yourself in need of another damage-reduction or instant-healing cooldown.



Gear

The two goals of a tank are first, to gain and hold threat, and second, to survive. Your objective in selecting gear (including enchants and gems) is to balance these goals with respect to the content you'll be tanking and the role(s) you expect to play.


Gearing for survival

There are several ways to enhance your survivability. The first is to eliminate incoming critical hits; this is generally considered mandatory for serious tanking. Beyond that, a tank can focus on avoidance (increasing the chance for attacks to miss completely), mitigation (reducing the largest possible amount of damage that can be done to you), or soaking ability (stacking stamina). There are advantages and disadvantages to all these approaches, and different encounters will favor different survival strategies.

Eliminating critical hits

When you begin accumulating tanking gear, the greatest immediate danger facing you is critical hits. Critical hits from mobs do double the normal damage (spells cast by mobs cannot critically hit) and in most serious tanking situations taking a critical hit can be extremely dangerous, if not immediately fatal. ("Serious" here refers to tanking in level 80 heroic instances and raids. While leveling in non-heroic instances, you don't need to worry overly much about critical hits as long as your healer is on the ball.)

Because of this, the first gearing goal of any tank should be to become immune to critical hits. Becoming crit-immune against a level 83 mob, such as a raid boss, requires 540 defense skill. Assuming you're trained up to the level 80 maximum of 400 base defense, this requires a total of 689 defense rating from your gear. For heroic 5-mans, the highest level mobs present will be level 82. Preventing crits from them requires only 535 defense skill, or 664 defense rating.

(The crit-immunity threshold is sometimes referred to as the "defense cap" because further defense beyond that level no longer reduces your chance to take a crit. However, extra defense beyond this point will still add to your avoidance, and in fact defense is still a very good stat to use for that purpose.)

Becoming crit-immune is generally not something that happens "by itself" at pre-raid and early raid gear levels. You'll need to pay attention to your defense as you gear up, even after you've first reached crit immunity. In many cases, epic tanking gear has less defense rating on it than some blue pieces in the same slot, so it's frequently the case that upgrading a piece requires you to make changes in your gear elsewhere in order to stay above the crit-immunity threshold.

Avoidance

The philosophy behind gearing for avoidance is that the best way to minimize the damage you take is simply to keep it from hitting you entirely. Gearing for avoidance means increasing your miss, dodge, and parry chances as far as possible. A tank who's purely interested in avoidance doesn't make an effort to increase his block chance or block value; by his philosophy it's not worth removing a small bit of damage when you can focus on just avoiding the whole thing.

Avoidance tanks function best against bosses and mobs that land heavy blows, where block value isn't terribly significant and you'd rather just avoid the whole thing and let your healers cancel their big heals.

Gearing for avoidance places high value on defense rating, dodge rating, parry rating, and agility. Because of the high degree of reliance on dodge and parry, the avoidance-focused tank needs to be more concerned about the diminishing returns on dodge and parry than other tanks. According to Satrina on the TankSpot forums, the optimal path is to keep your ratio of defense rating to dodge rating between 1.5:1 and 2:1, and to never gem or gear for parry, except in cases where the item is an overall upgrade.

Mitigation

Like avoidance-gearing, mitigation-gearing also seeks to reduce the total damage taken, but it takes the opposite approach to that goal by focusing on reducing the size of the blows taken rather than their number. The first goal of mitigation gearing is to fill up the entire hit table with full or partial avoidance and thus eliminate any chance of an unblocked hit landing. (This is similar to the process of becoming immune to crushing blows from TBC.) Once that's achieved, all remaining gear freedom is focused on armor or block value.

Mitigation tanks function best against bosses or mobs that use lighter, fast attacks, where blocking can really shine. Mitigation gearing is also useful when first learning a fight, because it reduces the largest amount of damage you can take from one blow or from a multi-attack combination.

The valued gear stats for a mitigation approach are block rating and defense rating until the hit table is filled up, and then block value and armor after that point. Other avoidance stats (doge, parry, agility) are useful if they help fill up the hit table, but they're inferior to defense (which adds more total avoidance including block) and block rating (which is far more efficient per-point at filling the hit table. An addon like TankPoints is almost essential for this approach to determine exactly how much avoidance is needed. Additional avoidance beyond what's needed to fill the hit table is wasted.

Soaking

Gearing for soaking ability doesn't seek to reduce the amount of damage taken; rather, it increases the amount of damage you can take before dying. It's very rough on healers' mana, but it's hard to beat for overall survivability, especially on learning encounters. Soaking ability also has one major advantage over mitigation and avoidance, which is that it's useful against spell attacks, which can't be avoided or blocked.

Gearing for soaking ability is pretty simple: just stack stamina. More stamina is always better, and there's no diminishing returns on stamina, so there's nothing tricky or fancy here.

What's the best for me?

This depends on several factors, including the encounter you're tanking on, your personal preference and comfort, your healers' personal preference and comfort (which is almost always more important than yours), and the other tanks you're working with and what their gearing philosophies are.

This is one area where communication with your healers is critically important. Make sure to ask them regularly how hard you are to heal and why, and pay attention to what they say. If they say something like "Your health spikes a lot" then you might want to move away from avoidance and more towards mitigation. If they say something like "You're just taking damage too fast for me to keep up," then perhaps you should think about going the other way.

If you're in a guild or some other regular group that focuses on 10 or 25-man raids, talk to the other tanks about what they're doing. Different classes have different strengths and weaknesses, and it's to the advantage of your raid or your guild to have tanks that can handle different kinds of situations well. Paladins are strongest at mitigation tanking, due to the fact that Druids and Death Knights have no blocking abilities, and Holy Shield allows a prot paladin to block incoming blows with more consistency than a warrior.

However, this does not mean that every paladin should gear for mitigation. Instead, look at the other tanks you raid with. If you're in a 25-man raiding group and have tanks of each class, then the best move is to let each tank specialize in the kind of survival they're best suited for. On the other hand, if you're in a 10-man raiding group and the only other regular tank is a warrior, you don't have a class that's well-suited for soak-tanking, and in that case you should consider having at least one of you build a high-stamina set.

What's also important to remember is that these concepts are not mutually exclusive. You can take a middle-of-the-road approach that blends more than one philosophy (in fact, to some degree you have to, because you don't get to custom-design gear to fit your needs), and you can keep multiple sets of gear in your bags to switch for different fights (in fact, youre going to have to do this to some degree as well).


Gearing for threat

Aside from staying alive, the other main goal of a tank is to generate sufficient threat to keep mobs under control. In stable situations in Tier 7 content, this is generally considered fairly trivial. It's not hard to build a large threat lead over comparably-geared dps so long as you get to directly engage the mob the entire time. However, many fights will force you to suspend your threat generation on a mob or boss from time to time, even while they allow your dps (ranged dps especially) to continue hammering away. Furthermore, while sustained threat generation is generally not hard, it's often the case that your dps will want to open up as soon as possible, and a single missed Shield of Righteousness at the beginning of the fight can often have serious consequences. Thus, while most of your gearing effort will focus on survivability, you'll still have to think about threat.

Sustained threat

If you're interested in maximizing your raw threat generation over a long period of time, the best stat to focus on is Strength. With a normal tanking talent build, each point of strength on gear yields 2.3 attack power and approximately 0.75 shield block value, making Strength a better threat value then either attack power or block value alone.

After Strength, the next best stats for overall threat are hit and expertise (until you reach the cap for both), followed by block value, followed by attack power. Spell power is the weakest, because threat abilities that scale with spell power also scale with attack power at the same rate, and attack power is far cheaper from an itemization standpoint.

Burst threat

There are situations where being able to pick up an untouched mob (such as an add) is extremely important. In these situations, it pays to be able to guarantee a certain amount of threat right off the bat no matter what. By far the best way to do this is to stack enough hit rating to reach the hit cap. (The exact amount depends on your raid composition and buffs, but the short version is that if you have a draenei in your party you need +7% chance to hit, or 230 hit rating, and if you don't have a draenei in your party you need +8%, or 263 hit rating.)

Once you've reached the hit cap, you can guarantee that Shield of Righteousness, Avenger's Shield, and Judgements will always hit their target, because these abilities can't be parried, dodged, or blocked. This means you can guarantee generating a certain minimum level of threat on the target within a set number of global cooldowns, so you can tell your dps, for example, that they can go ahead and unload once they see the judgement hammer hit the target, or whatever specific signal you like. As an added bonus, once you've reached the hit cap, if you're using the Glyph of Righteous Defense, you can guarantee that your Righteous Defense will always work and won't miss or be resisted. (On mobs/bosses that can be taunted, naturally.)


Enchants

Understanding the "cost" of stats

The WoW item designers distribute stats on an item by "buying" them with a budget of points that's based on the level of the item and its gear slot. For example, any epic shoulder that drops in Naxx-10 will have the same point budget; shoulders for different classes will spend the points on different things. Understanding how this works can help you evaluate enchants and gems.

Here are the costs of some common stats:

Stat	Item Point Cost	Notes
+1 str, agi, int, or spi	1.0
+1 any combat rating	1.0
+1 sta	0.67	1.5 stamina = 1 of any other base stat or rating
+1 spell power	0.86
+1 block value	0.33
+1 attack power	0.50	always worse than equal value in strength
+14 armor	1.0
+1 magic resistance (one school)	1.0

Gems will always have the same number of item points at a certain quality level. This means that for any quality level of gem and any specific number of slots on your gear, you can shuffle stats around however you like to activate socket bonuses. For example, rare-quality ("blue") gems in WotLK have 16 item points each. If your gear has 5 gem slots on it, that means you have 80 item points to spend on whatever stats you can get through gems. You can spend all 80 on stamina (+120 sta), or you can spend 40 on defense rating and 40 on strength (+40 def rating, +40 str) or whatever you like to get the stats you need.

Enchants, on the other hand, do not always have the same number of item points in a given slot. This means that some enchants are "more efficient" than others. For example, [Enchant Chest - Super Health] gives you 275 hp, while [Enchant Chest - Greater Defense] gives you 22 defense rating. The defense rating enchant is 22 item points worth of defense; the same number of points would get you 33 stamina, which would be 330 hp -- actually more like 400 hp once you apply talents and BoK. Thus, it's pretty obvious that the defense enchant is a more "powerful" enchant than the health enchant -- if you need more defense but also want to add more stamina, you should use your chest enchant to get the defense, and then get the stamina from gems or some other source.

Of course, common sense should apply as well. For example, [Enchant Shield - Greater Intellect] is worth more itemization points than [Enchant Shield - Defense]. But defense is an important tanking stat while intellect is effectively useless, so obviously you'd want to go with the defense enchant.

In general, if you're trying to sort out which enchants and gems to use, it's best to first figure out which stats you need. Then, look to see if there are any efficient enchants to get those stats. If so, get those; if not, figure out how you can get those stats from gems and work on that.

Slot-by-slot enchant analysis

(Note: Many profession-specific enchants (and enchant-like effects) have been upgraded as of the 3.2 patch. These upgrades mostly have the effect of keeping all professions roughly balanced in terms of the item-points received from their perks.)

Head

[Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector] (44 item points)

[Mind Amplification Dish]: (30 item points)

The Argent Crusade arcanum is what you'll be wanting to use on pretty much every tanking helm you ever get. If you're not revered with the Argent Crusade, that should be one of your top priorities.

The Mind Amplification Dish is available only to engineers. Strictly speaking it's a trade of 20 defense rating for 8 stamina compared to the standard Arcanum of the Defender. There's also the mind-control ability it grants; the limits of this aren't exactly known as of this writing (but don't plan your raid-boss strategies around it.)

Shoulder

[Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle]: 35 itemization points
[Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle]: 25 itemization points
[Greater Inscription of the Gladiator]:: 35 itemziation points

[Master's Inscription of the Pinnacle]:: 75 itemization points

The Sons of Hodir sell most of the shoulder enchants in WotLK, so getting to at least honored with them (through a quest chain that starts at K3 in Storm Peaks) is a good idea (unless you picked Inscription as a profession, obviously).

The Gladiator inscription requires some PvP to obtain, but it's still an excellent choice for tanking. It's the only choice that provides stamina in the shoulder slot, and the resilience can compensate for missing out on defense rating.

Cloak

[Enchant Cloak - Titanweave]: 16 itemization points
[Enchant Cloak - Major Agility]: 22 itemization points
[Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armor]: 16 itemization points

[Flexweave Underlay]: 23 itemization points

The raw efficiency of Major Agility is mitigated somewhat by the fact that agility is not an optimal tanking stat, but it's still the best enchant to get if you're interested in pure avoidance. Mighty Armor is good if you're going for mitigation, and Titanweave is obviously the best enchant to get if you're still looking for defense.

Chest

[Enchant Chest - Exceptional Resilience]: 20 resilience
[Enchant Chest - Super Health]: 275 health
[Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats]: 10 to all (primary) stats
[Enchant Chest - Greater Defense]: 22 defense rating
[Heavy Borean Armor Kit]: 18 stamina

[Enchant Chest - Super Stats]: 8 to all (primary) stats
[Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats]: 10 to all (primary) stats

Greater Defense is the most itemization-efficient, and definitely the way to go if you still need/want defense, or if you can use the enchant to switch defense gems to something else. The super and mighty health enchants are only worth ~15 and ~10 stamina, since they don't get any effect from BoK or stamina talents; generally the stat enchants are going to be better than these if you don't want the defense. Resilience should only be used if you absolutely need it to reach the crit cap (such as with resistance gear). The armor kit comes out to 227 hp on average with talents and BoK; not as good as the health enchant, but not far off and a great deal cheaper.

Wrists

[Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina]: 40 stamina
[Enchant Bracer - Major Defense]: 12 defense rating

[Leatherworking: Fur Lining - Stamina]: 102 stamina (req. 400 leatherworking)

Major Stamina is the most efficient option here by a significant margin. The only reason to go with the defense enchant is if you absolutely need it to reach the crit cap and you have no other options.

(Blacksmiths have an option to add a prismatic gem slot to their bracers. This does not count as an enchant.)

Hands

[Enchant Gloves - Armsman]: 10 parry rating, +2% threat
[Enchant Gloves - Major Agility]: 20 agility
[Enchant Gloves - Precision]: 20 hit rating
[Enchant Gloves - Expertise]: 20 expertise rating
[Heavy Borean Armor Kit]: 18 stamina

[Enchant Gloves - Major Strength]: 15 strength

[Reticulated Armor Webbing]: 885 armor (req. 400 engineering)
[Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket]: 1654-2020 fire damage, 45 second cooldown (req. 400 engineering)

All of the WotLK enchants are viable choices here, depending on what you want/need. Personally I'd recommend skipping Armsman until you get to the point where threat is actually a concern. The Major Strength enchant is from TBC, and should only be used if you're hell-bent on maximizing block value and dps. The armor kit is less efficient than the other options but if you really really want stamina, there it is.

If you're an engineer, the armor modification is excellent. At normal armor levels for a prot paladin, it'll reduce incoming physical damage by roughly 1.5-2% before blocking. The hand-mounted rockets are a fun toy, but between HoR, AS, and Exo, they're not likely to be necessary.

zeida: A note about the pyro rocket modification: They have an extremely wide firing arc (nearly 180 degrees) and a 45 yard range. Although the new single target taunt obviously offers superior damage and threat, and doesn't consume an enchantment slot, it will not possess this range or arc of the glove enhancement. I must confess I do use these, because I like to chain pull trash and they cut downtime substantially, but from a pure tanking standpoint, they are indeed hard to defend in terms of utility and worthiness.

Waist

[Eternal Belt Buckle]: Extra prismatic gem socket

The one and only good thing to put on your belt. Doesn't affect the belt socket bonuses in any way, so fill it with whatever you need most.

Legs

[Frosthide Leg Armor]: +55 stamina, +22 agility
[Jormungar Leg Armor]: +45 stamina, +15 agility

(Leatherworkers get a cheap leg armor patch with the same stats as the epic armor kit, but they can only use it on their own armor.)

The blue armor kit is a good deal cheaper than the epic kit, so plan accordingly if you're expecting upgrades soon.

Feet

[Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude]: 22 stamina
[Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality]: 15 stamina, +8% run speed

The run speed improvement on Tuskarr's Vitality does not stack with the 15% increased run speed from the Pursuit of Justice talent. Take this into account when planning your build and your enchants.

There's also an engineer-only boot gadget, [url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=55016]Nitro Boosts][/b], which increases your run speed for 5 seconds on use, with a 5-minute cooldown. At first glance, this looks like a nice answer to one of the weak spots of paladin tanks: the inability to close distances quickly (e.g., Intervene, Feral Charge, Death Grip). However, the rather unfortunate drawback is that the boosters have a chance to backfire and launch you straight up in the air. When this happens, mobs that you're tanking will lose aggro on you and run off to beat up other people, and you'll parachute back to the ground. While this can obviously be an entertaining effect, your 25-man raid might not be particularly pleased if they wipe on a difficult fight because your boots malfunctioned. So use these only if you're really sure they won't get you into trouble.

zeida: The nitro boost boots modification may in fact malfunction and knock the user high into the air, dropping aggro, but should this occur, he will not fall to the ground and die instantly; instead he receives the Parachute buff (just as he would being dismounted flying over Wintergrasp or Dalaran) and will fall slowly to the ground. I do not know whether this breaks on damage or not.

They have an additional possible malfunction not mentioned - they will sometimes be fully ineffective and do absolutely nothing.

I personally do have the nitros on my tanking boots as a PoJ specced paladin, simply because I believe having the capacity to quickly cover great distance (even unreliably) is far more potentially decisive than 22 stamina. Obviously, using these things when I am actively tanking a major mob would be irresponsible except in dire circumstances; nonetheless I like having the option available to me."

Finger

[Enchant Ring - Stamina]: +30 stamina (req. 400 enchanting)

This is the "perk" for being an enchanter: you get 60 extra stamina from enchanting your rings in a slot where non-enchanters get nothing.

Weapon

[Enchant Weapon - Blood Draining]: Potentially up to ~2k self-heal when you drop under 35% health
[Enchant Weapon - Blade Ward]: Chance for +200 parry rating and damage on parry
[Enchant Weapon - Accuracy]: +25 hit rating, +25 crit rating
[Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility]: +26 agility

[Titanium Weapon Chain]: +28 hit rating, 50% reduction in duration for disarm effects.

[Enchant Weapon - Potency]: +20 strength

Blood Draining and Blade Ward are the two high-end enchants at this point, and which is preferable depends on personal preference. Blade Ward procs significantly more often now that SoV procs count as weapon attacks, and the removal of the "leapfrog" effect from Ardent Defender means there's no real downside to Blood Draining.

As for the lower-end enchants, the Titanium Weapon Chain is very nice for hit-capping. Accuracy has almost as much hit rating and a lot of crit, so it's a solid enchant. Exceptional Agility is the only option if you want steady avoidance. Potency is included because it's the only +strength enchant, so it's the only way to increase block value if that's what you're really after.

(The planned Titanguard enchant for +50 stamina to a weapon has been removed and won't appear in the game.)

Shield

[Enchant Shield - Defense]: 20 defense rating

[Enchant Shield - Major Stamina]: 18 stamina

[Titanium Plating]: 81 block value, reduced disarm effects by 50%.

Defense or block value is generally the way to go here; Major stamina is a TBC enchant and should only be used if you really really really want stamina and you can't get it anywhere else.


Gems

As mentioned above, all gems of a the same quality level have the same number of itemization points worth of stats. The numbers are given in this chart:

Quality (WotLK gems)	Primary color (red, yellow, blue)	Secondary color (green, orange, purple)
Uncommon	12 points	6 points + 6 points
"Perfect" Uncommon	14 points	7 points + 7 points
Rare	16 points	8 points + 8 points
Epic	20 points	10 points + 10 points
Dragon's Eye (Jewelcrafter only)	34 points
Meta (vendor)		17 points + secondary effect
Meta (crafted)		21 points + secondary effect

For the most part, gems just represent a pool of points that you can spend on whatever stats you want. If you don't care about the socket bonus for a piece of gear, then obviously you can just throw in whatever gems you want. If you decide you do want the socket bonus, then you'll need to figure out which gems can activate the bonus while still giving you as many of the stats you most want as possible.

Comments on the specific stats available for each gem color:

Red
(also orange, purple)

Good
Dodge rating (avoidance)
Parry rating (avoidance)
Agility (avoidance, tiny bit of mitigation, some crit)
Strength (threat, some mitigation)
Expertise rating(some threat, some avoidance)

Bad
Attack Power (always worse than strength)
Spell Power (even worse than attack power)
Armor Penetration Rating (only affects white damage threat and damage, which is tiny)

Red gems can have some useful stats for tanks, but there are no crucial red stats as there are for yellow (defense, hit) or blue (stamina). Strength can be handy for threat generation, but it's secondary in importance to hit, and the block value provided by strength is a fairly inefficient way to boost mitigation. For most tanks (as of the early stages of WotLK anyway), red gems are practically never used, and orange/purple gems are only used to activate socket bonuses.


Yellow
(also orange, green)

Good
Defense rating (crit-immunity, avoidance)
Hit rating (threat, especially reliable threat)

Bad
Crit rating (fun, but a waste of points that could be used for something better)
Haste rating (minimal threat value)
Resilience rating (unless you desperately need to be uncrittable and defense won't get you there)
Intellect (if you're having mana issues, there are much better ways to fix them)

Yellow is one of the bread-and-butter gem colors for tanking. It takes a lot of defense rating to reach crit-immunity, and hit rating is absolutely crucial to reliable taunts and realiable threat generation. Between the two, you can plan on using a lot of yellow and yellow-hybrid gems, especially early on in gear progression.


Blue
(also green, purple)

Good
Stamina

Bad
Everything else

Do not get mp5, do not get spirit, and don't even think about spell penetration. Stamina is the beginning and end of blue gemming for tanking. Whether you want to slant your "free gems" to stamina or to avoidance is a matter of personal preference, but every single blue or blue-hybrid gem you ever socket in tanking gear should have stamina on it, period.


Prismatic
[Nightmare Tear]

This gem can be handy because it can match any slot, and it counts as a red, a yellow, and a blue gem for meta-gem activation. The total itemization value of useful tanking stats is greater than a standard epic gem (10 str + 10 agi + 10 sta = 26.7 item points) but without any focus on a single stat.

Meta
[Austere Earthsiege Diamond]: 32 stamina, +2% armor from items
[Eternal Earthsiege Diamond]: 21 defense rating, +5% shield block value

[Effulgent Skyflare Diamond]: 32 stamina, reduces spell damage taken by 2%

Effulgent Skyflare is really only useful for extreme magic-damage fights; the real choice for standard tanking gear is between the two earthsiege diamonds. The stamina and defense rating on these gems have the same itemization cost, so they're equally "valuable". If you need the defense on the Eternal to reach the crit cap then the choice is made for you; otherwise you can take either the stamina or the defense rating and make up for the other by shuffling gems around somewhere else.

The important difference is the 2% armor bonus vs the 5% block value bonus. For most realistic armor values (DR's between 50% and 65%) an extra 2% armor will reduce the damage taken by approximately 1%. So the two gems are equal in overall damage reduction when 5% of your total blocked damage is the same as 1% of the total incoming damage before blocking. That is, if you're blocking 20% or more of the incoming physical damage, you'll get more damage reduction out of the 5% blockvalue bonus than out of the 2% armor bonus.

This is something you'll have to determine for yourself, because it depends on what content you're doing, what kind of other gear you have, what your overall gearing strategy is, etc, etc. Also, keep in mind that in situations where you can't block at all, such as stuns, extra block value does absolutely nothing for you, but the armor is always there. On the other hand, the block value bonus increases your threat, especially your burst threat, whereas the armor bonus doesn't.


Slot-specific notes and "interesting" items

Weapon

As it was in TBC, the weapon slot has the largest effect on your overall threat generation, but for different reasons. In TBC, a spellpower weapon was the preferred way to go for tanking, because all of the paladin damage spells (at the time) scaled with spellpower and nothing else. This is no longer the case in WotLK, since every prot paladin damage ability that scales with spellpower now also scales with attack power (and in fact scales better with AP than with SP because AP is cheaper) and the two new spells, ShR and HotR, don't scale with spellpower at all.

The best weapons now are standard tanking weapons, since HotR scales strongly with weapon dps and these weapons also have mitigation/avoidance stats on them (especially handy for reaching and maintaining crit immunity). While a spellpower weapon would boost damage from a number of different abilities, the overall effect would still be weaker than the scaling of a melee weapon on HotR damage. (If there were weapons that had sacrificed dps converted into AP, those would be the best weapons, but those don't exist.)

The speed of your weapon is relatively inconsequential. Slower weapons have slightly better properties for parrying (both yours and your target's) and for using HotR with Seal of Righteousness. Fast weapons allow you to stack Seal of Vengeance slightly faster. Neither of these effects is significant enough for weapon speed to be a factor in your gear decisions. Choose the weapon that has the highest dps or the best stats.

Shield

Shields have a lot of armor relative to other pieces and relative to the other stats on shields. An ilevel 213 shield will have a little more than half the stats budget as an ilevel 213 chest, but it will have over three times as much armor. Because of this, make sure to pay attention to the armor when comparing shields; frequently a higher-level shield will offer you more mitigation than a lower-level shield, even if the stat allocation isn't as desirable.

Trinkets

[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]

This is the best threat/dps trinket in the game (the +strength version), and it also provides a respectable amount of mitigation through block value. It also does handy double-duty as an excellent Retribution trinket if you respec or dual-spec Ret. This is not cheap, but if you have the money to spend it can be an excellent purchase.

[Anvil of Titans]

The second-best threat/dps trinket. In addition to the nice proc, it's worth noting that the 84 resilience on this item is worth 1.02% crit reduction. So, if you're designing a threat/dps set with this trinket, you can actually afford to lower your defense skill to 515 and still be uncrittable by raid bosses. This can let you swap out one or two other pieces of tanking gear for higher-dps items, even non-tanking (i.e., Retribution-type) gear.

Furthermore, if you're gearing for high threat/dps, you'll have a lot of pieces with block value on them, and gear with block value almost always has significant amounts of block rating as well. Depending on what you have available, you may even be able to use this trinket, swap some tanking gear out for dps items to reduce your defense to 515, and still have enough block rating left to fill up the hit table when Holy Shield is active.

If survival is a concern at all, this is not a great idea, because effectively it means you're increasing the number of attacks that will hit you. But it can be useful and fun for some farming runs, and especially for working on speed achievements such as the 3-minute Patchwerk kill.

[Defender's Code]
[Grim Toll]
[Repelling Charge]
(Various other assorted epic and blue trinkets with large single-stat boosts.)

There are a number of trinkets available that give large buffs to a single stat. These can be especially useful to swap in and out for different fights where you need specific stats. For example, armor is especially useful on Maexxna when you get web-wrapped and can't dodge, parry, or block, so you can use Defender's Code for that fight; on another fight where you have to pick up adds you might prefer Grim Toll or something similar, etc. Building a diverse collection of trinkets can give you a lot of extra flexibility without having to carry around tons of items for other gear slots.

Naturally, be respectful of the needs of others in your raid when rolling on non-tanking trinkets.

Librams

[Libram of Defiance] (Patch 3.2: chance of 200 dodge rating for 18 seconds each time you use HotR)
[Libram of the Sacred Shield] (Patch 3.2: lasts 20 seconds when you cast Holy Shield)
[Libram of Obstruction] (Patch 3.2: lasts 10 seconds)

The changes to block value in the 3.2 patch left the Sacred Shield libram in an odd place; while its effect lasts longer than Obstruction, it's hard to envision a scenario where you would care about your block value but wouldn't be judging enough to keep Obstruction active permanently.

The exact properties of the Defiance Libram aren't yet known. Data mining points to a proc chance of 80% but nothing is known about the cooldown on the effect, if any. Although 200 dodge rating converts to roughly 4.4% dodge chance, diminishing returns will make the actual increase somewhat lower.

Other slots

[Undiminished Battleplate]
[Gauntlets of Dragon Wrath]
(and other items)

Sometimes you'll see a piece of dps plate that still has decent tanking stats. These two items, for example, are not really "tanking" pieces, but at the same time all of their stats are valuable for tanking, and they might be useful, at least situationally. If you were putting together a +hit set, for example, you could use these two pieces of plate, and then perhaps use the Repelling Charge trinket (see above) as well to offset the lost defense rating.


Glyphs

Major

There are a number of useful major glyphs for tanking, and the exact set that's best for you comes down to personal preference and the types of encounters and roles you end up seeing.

Must Have

[Glyph of Divine Plea]: Since the Guarded by the Light talent allows you to keep Divine Plea active full-time as long as you're hitting something, this glyph effectively amounts to a flat 3% reduction to all incoming damage. This is probably the only glyph universally considered a "must-have" for tanking.

Good and/or Situationally Useful

[Glyph of Seal of Vengeance]: 10 expertise (not 10 expertise rating) decreases your chance to be dodged and parried by 2.5% each, potentially increasing your chance to hit a mob by up to 5% if you're not already at the dodge cap. Against a boss this is of debatable value; since Seal of Vengeance is a countinuous damage-over-time effect your threat doesn't really suffer from a miss, but on the other hand reducing a boss's opportunity to parry your attacks can help prevent damage bursts.

Against groups of mobs, this glyph can often be very handy, especially in the case of trying to initially pick them up with HotR. HotR can be dodged or parried ("deflected") so this glyph can potentially make the difference when you're trying to get that first hit in on a mob.

[Glyph of Righteous Defense]: Handy in multi-mob situations, especially if you don't have much hit gear. Against bosses this is somewhat less useful than you might imagine; most bosses that require heavy use of taunting have artificially low resist rates.

[Glyph of Salvation]: Useful if you need another damage-reduction cooldown. Obviously using Hand of Salvation as a mini-shieldwall will cost you threat, so make sure you're running with a good threat lead.

[Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous]: Good if you frequently find yourself managing crowds.

[Glyph of Hammer of Justice]: Situationally this can be very useful, especially if you're specced into the 20-second cooldown on HoJ and frequently find yourself dealing with stunnable or interruptable mobs.

[Glyph of Avenger's Shield]: This is a matter of personal preference. I've never been interested, but if you'd prefer to have a stronger ranged threat burst on one target, then by all means go for it.

Avoid

[Glyph of Consecration]: The cooldown increase that comes with this glyph will screw up a standard 6/9 rotation. (The glyph is intended for Ret paladins to reduce their cooldown-collision issues and improve their mana efficiency.)

[Glyph of Exorcism]: Exorcism doesn't usually figure into the standard Prot rotation. This glyph will increase your ranged burst threat, but it's not a significant enough effect to warrant using a major glyph slot.

[Glyph of Judgement]: Prot paladin judgements don't do enough damage to make this worthwhile. (Another glyph intended for Ret, since their judgements -- Blood and Command -- have a weapon-damage component and do much more damage.)

[Glyph of Seal of Righteousness]: Seal of Vengeance is almost always preferred as a tanking seal. Even in those rare situations where SoR is preferable, the damage buff from this glyph is not enough to make it worthwhile.

[Glyph of Shield of Righteousness]: ShR is fairly cheap to begin with, and mana really shouldn't be enough of an issue for this to be worthwhile.

[Glyph of Spiritual Attunement]: This is worth 40% of one talent point in SA. If you're at 1/2 SA and having mana problems, the first thing you should do is respec and pick up that second point. If you're at 2/2 SA and still having mana issues, it's unlikely that going from 10% to 12% is going to fix them, and you should probably take a closer look at how you're managing your mana usage, Divine Plea, etc.

[Glyph of Turn Evil]: Primarily a PvP glyph. If you're relying on Turn Evil frequently for crowd control in PvE, then perhaps this is worthwhile, but offhand I don't see how that would happen.

Minor

Unlike Major Glyphs, there really aren't many good options for Minor Glyphs. The minor glyphs that are useful for a prot paladin amount to Sense Undead, Lay on Hands, and Blessing of Kings.

Take because they're useful

[Glyph of Sense Undead]: A 1% damage increase against a specific mob type may not sound great, but it's a pretty good deal for a minor glyph, especially since one of the major raid instances (Naxxramas) is chock full of undead.

[Glyph of Lay on Hands]: Reducing the cooldown of a potentially lifesaving spell from 20 minutes to 15 minutes is a nice effect.

Take because it's convenient

[Glyph of Blessing of Kings]: Once you start raiding you'll discover how tiny your mana bar is compared to the buffs you have to cast after every wipe. Well, that's what this glyph is for! Anytime you can claim BoK duty in a raid, this glyph will allow you to buff the entire raid, cast Righteous Fury, and activate your seal without having to drink!

Don't take because you'll never use them

[Glyph of Blessing of Might]
[Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom]

Just shoot me now

[Glyph of the Wise]



Consumables

Consumable buffs can be treated similarly to enchants and gems. They essentially represent extra "enchantment slots" that you can fill with different stats. They're more flexible than enchants, since you can choose what you want at the time you use the consumable, but as the name suggests, consumables get consumed when you use them and have to be replaced.

Flasks/Elixirs

Flasks

[Flask of Stoneblood]: +1300 hp (~= +104 stamina with talents and BoK)

[Flask of Fortification]: +10 defense rating, +500 hp (~= +40 stamina with talents and BoK)
[Lesser Flask of Toughness]: +50 resilience rating

As of the 3.1 patch, Stoneblood is by far the most powerful option here. Only go with one of the other two if you absolutely need the extra defense/resilience to reach crit-immunity -- and eve then, you're probably better off with elixirs.

Guardian Elixirs

[Elixir of Mighty Defense]: +45 defense rating
[Elixir of Protection]: +800 armor
[Elixir of Mighty Fortitude]: +20 hp/5, +350 hp (~= +28 stamina with talents and BoK)

The Mighty Defense elixir represents a great itemization savings if your gear lets you trade defense rating out for stamina efficiently, and the Protection Elixir is a great physical mitigation buff. The Mighty Fortitude Elixir is pretty terrible, and really only useful if you're using a Battle Elixir for some other reason and you just want to fill the Guardian slot. (And even then you really should go for Protection.)

Battle Elixirs

[Elixir of Accuracy]: +45 hit rating
[Elixir of Expertise]: +45 expertise rating
[Elixir of Mighty Agility]: +45 agility
[Elixir of Mighty Strength]: +50 strength

These are all pretty good options, depending on what stat you find yourself most in need of. Accuracy can be especially important for fights where reliable taunting and snap-threat are needed, if your standard gear doesn't bring you to the hit cap.

Flask vs Elixirs

A Stoneblood Flask gives you a slightly greater overall value than a pair of elixirs. It also persists through death, which is extremely useful if you're learning a fight and wiping frequently, and extra health is by far the most generally useful thing for a tank. On the other hand, elixirs give you much more freedom to mix and match different buffs to improve stats that are important for a specific encounter, or to compensate for weak points in your gear. They don't persist through death, but if you aren't dying a lot (e.g., a farming run) they're cheaper than a flask.

Generally, most tanks will use a flask for learning attempts or "wipe nights" since flasks last through death and improve survivability. When you've got an encounter reliably on farm status, then it can be more useful to switch to elixirs, which can improve your mitigation and your dps/threat.

Food

Feasts
[Fish Feast]
[Great Feast]

Strength
[Dragonfin Filet]

Agility
[Blackened Dragonfin]

Hit Rating
[Worg Tartare]
[Snapper Extreme]

Expertise Rating
[Rhinolicious Wormsteak]

Like most consumables, choose the food that augments the stats you find most useful. Feasts aren't the most efficient use of the slot for tanking, but they don't cost you anything (assuming someone else provided the feast) and they give you the same stamina bonus as other foods.

Potions

[Indestructible Potion]
[Runic Healing Potion]
[Runic Mana Potion]

Potions have a one-minute cooldown, but the cooldown will only start when you're not in combat. Hence, you can only use one potion during each fight, but if you use one potion just before the fight starts, you'll be able to use a second one a minute later. Obviously this doesn't help much with mana or healing potions (presumably you're going to be at full health/mana before starting a fight) but it can be useful with Indestructible Potions, since you can drink one just before the start of the fight, and then drink a second one after the first wears off, for a total of (almost) 4 minutes of the potion effect.

Indestructible Potion are useful for dealing with enrage-type effects or other bursts of heavy physical damage. Most fights in heroics and T7 content last less than 4 minutes, so you can use this two-potion trick to get yourself a 3500-armor buff for the entire fight. As fights get longer in the later tiers of content, you'll have to be more strategic in your use of Indestructible Potions.

Healing potions can be useful for getting yourself out of a tight spot, but bear in mind that your buffed health pool is going to be in the 30k+ range even in fairly basic gear, so a potion that heals for an average of 3600hp is not going to make much of a difference if you're getting hammered fast.

You shouldn't be relying on mana potions frequently, but having a stack handy can help you get out of an occasional low-mana jam.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Cathela

Long-term Considerations



The Tanking Ethos

Opinion follows, so feel free to skip this section if you like.

For any guild seriously committed to endgame raiding, the tanks are in many ways the most important characters. Generally the tanking role shoulders a great deal of responsibility, and the tanks are more often in a position to wipe the raid with a single error than any other character. This is somewhat less true than it used to be, and as raid encounters become more difficult other players are usually forced to assume more personal responsibility for the raid, but it's still the case that the tanks are under the most overall pressure. Being a raid tank is not a low-stress position.

This focusing of responsibility on the tanks also applies to preparation outside of raiding time. Most of the damage taken by the raid gets funneled through the tank; for this reason many guilds give tanks priority on loot tokens and such. With this privilege, however, comes the responsibility to maximize your strength as a tank. You'll end up spending more on keeping gems and enchants up to date, and you'll end up using more consumables. When the rest of the raid is skipping consumables while learning an encounter, the tanks won't be, because the longer the tanks live on learning pulls, the more learning happens.

Exactly how much work is involved will depend on your guild/raid and how committed you are to pushing progression. In general, it's a good thing if the tanks are a bit more focused and "hardcore" than the other raiders, but not by too much. If you're super-gung-ho about perfecting your character while the rest of your guild takes a relaxed attitude towards raiding, you're going to end up frustrated. If the situation is reversed, your guild is going to end up frustrated. It's important to find a guild or raiding situation that matches your level of playtime and commitment to raiding.

In addition, don't be a jerk. Being a tank, especially the main tank, is important but it's not a license to ignore your guild leaders or yell at your healers every time you die. Recognize that your guild probably puts a lot of resources into you; this doesn't mean they own you or your gear, but if you're going to stop raiding with them for some reason (real life situation or moving to another guild, for example) give them advance warning so they can start looking for another tank.

Speaking of healers, your life is in their hands, so it's extra-important not to piss them off. If you seem to be dying a lot, communicate with your healers about what's going on and try to fix it together. If it's genuinely their fault, yelling at them is still a bad idea. Even if yelling is part of your guild's raiding atmosphere, it's still better if someone besides you chews the healers out. Communicate with your healers and respect the work they're doing; if they know you appreciate them they'll bust their asses extra-hard to keep you alive.

If you're a raid leader, consider not being the main tank, or at least make sure you have competent assistants who can help at leading the raid, since you often can't see the whole raid and you're usually busy with other things. Anyone who's tanked Prince Malchezaar in Karazahn knows that you can't call out infernal locations while you're staring at a blue demon crotch.

And finally, be prepared for raids. Bring a couple stacks of the right food, bring flasks, and come with a raiding talent spec. Yes, getting the +5% crit talent in Ret makes for some awesome yellow numbers, but Ardent Defender will save your ass, and by extension your raid's ass.



Professions

As a tank, you'll want to make sure your profession choices have perks that enhance your value as a tank. Fortunately, the various profession perks are balanced in such a way that each profession's perks are worth the same as two epic gems (i.e., 40 itemization points, give or take one or two). So in the long run, the only "bad" professions for tanking are the ones where the profession perks can't be used to help you as a tank.


Gathering Professions

Herbalism

Permanent perks: [Lifeblood]
Temporary perks: None.
Moneymaking potential: High (selling herbs).

Herbalism can be a lucrative profession, but its actual combat benefits are minimal; a 3600-point heal isn't going to amount to much in most tanking situations.

Skinning

Permanent perks: [Master of Anatomy]
Temporary perks: None.
Moneymaking potential: High (selling leather/skins).

A decent moneymaker, though generally not as good as herbalism or mining. Crit rating is unfortunately not very useful to a tank.

Mining

Permanent perks: [Toughness] (+76 stamina with full talents and BoK)
Temporary perks: None.
Moneymaking potential: High (selling ore/bars, smelting Titansteel)

By far the most useful gathering profession for a tank; Toughness is on par with many of the perks of crafting professions, and the ability to mine ore can be used as a moneymaker or to provide materials for Blacksmithing, Engineering, or Jewelcrafting. In general, if you want a gathering profession for your prot paladin, this is the one you should take; even if you have a crafting profession that needs a different kind of raw material you're better off just mining, selling the ore, and buying whatever you need.

Crafting Professions

Alchemy

Permanent perks: [Mixology]
Temporary perks: [Indestructible Alchemist's Stone]
Moneymaking potential: Good (crafting potions/elixirs/flasks, transmuting eternals and meta gems)

The exact buff given by Mixology varies for different flasks/elixirs, and seems to be set to balance it with other professions. In patch 3.2, Mixology with a Stoneblood flask will probably give about 750hp extra.

Blacksmithing

Permanent perks: [Socket Bracer], [Socket Gloves] (Do not use enchant slots.)
Temporary perks: Some BoP weapons for leveling if you go to the trouble of becoming a Weaponsmith.
Moneymaking potential: Low (flooded market for most Blacksmithing products)

With the 3.2 patch and epic gems, the two extra slots are worth +60 stamina, in line with the buffs received by other professions.

Enchanting

Permanent perks: [Enchant Ring - Stamina] (Can be used on both rings.)
Temporary perks: None.
Moneymaking potential: Moderate (enchanting for money), but expensive to level.

The ring enchants are as powerful as the blacksmithing sockets, but not as flexible. (There are AP and SP enchants for rings, but these are both very inefficient for tanking and generally not worthwhile.) On the other hand though, stamina is a stat that never goes out of style for tanking. One upside of Enchanting is that it doesn't require materials from a gathering profession, although most enchanters will tell you this is made up for by the high cost of leveling the profession.

Engineering

Permanent perks: [Reticulated Armor Webbing], [Flexweave Underlay], various "weird" enchantments and items
Temporary perks: [Armored Titanium Goggles], [Sonic Booster]
Moneymaking potential: Moderate (farming elemental materials, selling a few items)

Engineering is the "oddball" profession. The hand armor kit is worth about a 1.5-2% physical damage reduction, at the expense of another enchant for your gloves, which makes it a good deal. (Itemization-wise, 885 armor is worth about 63 points; making it roughly 45 points more valuable than the standard 15-20 point glove enchants.) The cloak underlay gets you exactly one point of agility more than the standard cloak enchant, but it's substantially cheaper.

Aside from some other unusual gear improvements (described in the enchants section), bombs and grenades are the other main benefit of engineering. Because they do AoE damage at range, they can be very useful for picking up groups of mobs that you can't reach or grab any other way.

Inscription

Permanent perks: [Master's Inscription of the Pinnacle]
Temporary perks:
Moneymaking potential: Moderate (selling glyphs)

The professional shoulder inscription gives 40 dodge rating more than the [Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle], and doesn't require you to grind Sons of Hodir rep up to exalted. The itemization value of this is on par with the blacksmithing slots, but like the enchanting perk it's inflexible. But if you're a fan of avoidance you'll never really want to change this anyway.

Jewelcrafting

Permanent perks: Dragon's Eye prismatic gems, each 34 itemization points (max 3 equipped at once)
Temporary perks: [Figurine - Monarch Crab], [Endless Mana Potion]
Moneymaking potential: Moderate (prospecting and cutting gems)

As of patch 3.2, and possibly earlier, the Dragon's Eye gems for Jewelcrafters are no longer prismatic, and this suffer the same color-slot difficulties as any other gems. Compared to a standard 20-point epic gem, the total benefit of three Dragon's Eyes is 42 points, putting it on par with other profession perks.

In addition, the [Figurine - Monarch Crab] is a very good item as far as trinkets go. Like all profession craftables, it will eventually be replaced by loot upgrades, but the stat bonuses (including the socket bonus) are worth a total of 80 itemization points, not far short of the 84 static itemization points on a lot of ilevel-200 epic trinkets.

The [Endless Mana Potion] is useful for situations where mana gets tricky, especially when you outgear the damage. (It's listed as "temporary" here because it consumes the potion cooldown, meaning you shouldn't use it on fights where you need an Invulnerability Potion, for example.)

Leatherworking

Permanent perks: [Fur Lining - Stamina]
Temporary perks: [Jormungar Leg Reinforcements] (cheap LW-only equivalent to epic leg armor kit)
Moneymaking potential: Moderate (selling armor patches, some craftables)

When used in place of the standard +40 stamina bracer enchant, the Fur Lining gives the same stamina bonus as most other profession perks. The leg reinforcements aren't any more powerful than the normal epic armor kits for legs; they're just a lot cheaper.

Tailoring

Permanent perks: Nothing useful for tanking
Temporary perks: Nothing useful for tanking
Moneymaking potential: Moderate -- extra Frostweave cloth looted, selling spellthreads and such.

Tailoring is the only crafting profession that's really not useful at all for a tank. The perks are a choice of three cloak enchants, none of which are useful for a tank, and cheap versions of the epic spellthread enchantments for pants, which you won't be using anyway. Avoid tailoring like the plague.

Summary of Perks

Good professions for tanking:

• Jewelcrafting: 42 direct itemization points from Dragon's Eye gems
• Engineering: 885 armor at the cost of a glove enchant (net gain of approx 45 itemization points, but only if you like armor)
• Blacksmithing: 40 itemization points in extra gem slots
• Alchemy: Variable depending on consumables used; max of approximately 40 itemization points (?)
• Inscription: 40 dodge rating
• Leatherworking: +62 stamina (approximately 41 itemization points)
• Mining: +60 stamina (approximately 40 itemization points)
• Enchanting: +60 stamina (approximately 40 itemization points)

Horrible professions for tanking:

• Herbalism: Small self-heal
• Skinning: Crit rating
• Tailoring: Useless cloak enchants

As long as you avoid herbalism, skinning, and tailoring, you can't really go wrong. Jewelcrafting, blacksmithing, and alchemy all offer solid and flexible buffs. Engineering offers the most interesting "bag of tricks" if you're the kind of player who enjoys playing with in-game toys, and the glove armor patch is quite good if you like armor as a stat. If you want a gathering profession, make it Mining.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Cathela

Reference



Stats and Other Numbers

Assuming level 80 in all cases. Note that in item design, all primary stats and ratings "cost" the same amount per point, with the exception of stamina which costs 2/3 as much per point as the other stats and ratings (or equivalently, 1.5 stamina costs the same as 1.0 of any other primary stat or combat rating.) Note also that primary stats are affected by talents and by Blessing of Kings, while combat ratings are not.

Primary stats

• Strength (str)
  • 1 strength = 2 attack power (AP) = 0.14 dps weapon (white) damage.
  • 2 strength = 1 block value before talents, 1.3 block value with the Redoubt talent
  • The Divine Strength talent increases total strength by 15%.
• Agility (agi)
  • 59.89 agility = +1% dodge chance. This is somewhat less efficient than Dodge Rating at increasing your dodge chance (45.25 dodge rating = +1% dodge chance), but with Blessing of Kings the number decreases to 54.45 agility, which makes it roughly 80% as good as dodge rating for dodge purposes.
  • 52.08 agility = +1% melee crit chance.
  • 1 agility = 2 armor.
  • Agility is often overlooked as a tanking stat, but it's actually an efficient way to get avoidance, mitigation, and threat from one stat.
• Stamina (sta)
  • 1 stamina = +10 total health (hp).
  • 10 stamina = +3 spell power (SP) from the Touched by the Light talent.
  • The Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise talents increase total stamina by 8% and 6% respectively, for a total increase of 14.48% with both talents. If you're buffed with Blessing of Kings or Blessing of Sanctuary as well, then each additional point of stamina increases your total health by approximately 12.6.
• Intellect (int)
  • 1 intellect = +15 total mana. This increases the size of your starting mana pool and the maximum amount of mana you can store at any point. It also increases the rate of mana regeneration from effects that restore a fraction of your mana pool, such as Replenishment, Blessing of Sanctuary, and Divine Plea. This is a nice effect, but it doesn't make intellect worthwhile as a stat for tanking gear.
  • 166.67 Intellect = +1% chance to crit with spells, but all Prot paladin offensive abilities except Exorcism use the melee crit rate.
• Spirit (spi)
  • Increases mana regeneration outside of the five-second rule. As a tank, this effect is negligible (and frankly it's negligible for all paladin specs).

Combat Ratings

• Defense Rating
  • 4.92 defense rating = 1 defense skill (If you're new to these stats, pay careful attention to the difference between defense rating and defense skill.)
  • 25 defense skill gives:
    • -1% chance to take a critical hit from melee or ranged (non-spell) attacks.
    • +1% chance to be missed
    • +1% chance to dodge, parry, and block (each).
  • Mobs have a 5% chance to crit a player of the same level with a fully trained defense skill (400 defense skill for a level 80 player). Each level of difference increases the mob's chance to crit by 0.2%. Hence:
    • A level 83 mob (e.g., a raid boss) will have a 5.6% chance to crit a level 80 player with 400 defense. Accordingly, the player will need an additional 5.6 * 25 = 140 defense skill, or a total of 540 defense skill to be uncrittable by raid bosses. This is equivalent to 689 defense rating.
    • A level 82 mob (the highest level found in heroic 5-man dungeons) will have a 5.4% chance to crit a level 80 player with 400 defense. Accordingly, the player will need an additional 5.4 * 25 = 135 defense skill, or a total of 535 defense skill to be uncrittable in heroic 5-mans. This is equivalent to 664 defense rating.
  • Players with enough defense to be uncrittable don't benefit from the crit-reduction aspect of additional defense skill, but they still gain miss, parry, dodge, and block chance as defense is added.
    • 25 defense skill gives +1% to miss, parry, dodge, and block. This requires 123 defense rating.
    • Hence, adding 1% total avoidance (blocked attacks included) requires approximately 31 defense rating.
    • Adding 1% full avoidance (blocked attacks excluded) requires 41 defense rating.
  • Increases to the chances to parry, dodge, and be missed generated by adding defense count towards the diminishing returns on those stats (see below). However, there are no diminishing returns on the chance to block.
• Dodge Rating
  • 45.25 dodge rating = +1% chance to dodge.
  • Dodge rating is affected by diminishing returns in WotLK: the more dodge you have, the more dodge rating is required to add each additional percent chance to dodge. This is a rather complicated system, but effectively it means that dodge rating is probably inferior to defense rating as a means for adding pure avoidance.
  • Dodging opens an opportunity for Overpower mechanics to hit you for a large amount of damage. This is primarily a concern in PvP (against warriors) but there are a very few raid bosses and mobs that have an Overpower-type mechanic. This is not generally worth worrying about, but it may come to bear on specific encounters.
• Parry Rating
  • 45.25 parry rating = +1% chance to parry.
  • Like dodge rating, parry rating is subject to diminishing returns.
  • When an attack is parried, your next attack will happen more quickly. (This is why parry is more "expensive" than dodge.) I won't go into the exact mechanics here, except to note that (a) this effect is more pronounced with slower melee weapons, and (b) weapon-based threat is generally not significant enough for this to make much of a difference, and hence it's not worth considering when gearing for tanking.
• Block Rating
  • 16.29 block rating = +1% chance to block.
  • This does not suffer from diminishing returns.
  • Block is far "cheaper" than dodge or parry or even defense per point of avoidance; however, blocking only absorbs an amount of damage equal to your block value whereas m/p/d avoid all damage. (It does, however, provide threat when Holy Shield is active.)
• Hit Rating
  • 32.79 hit rating = +1% chance to hit with melee or ranged attacks (-1% chance to miss).
    • For our purposes, this applies to melee swings (white damage), Avenger's Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of Wrath, and Judgements.
    • Against a raid boss, melee and ranged attacks have a base 8% chance to miss (this is changed from 9% in TBC), so 263 hit rating is required to eliminate all melee misses if there are no other bonuses to hit.
    • Draenei have a racial aura that gives +1% to hit. This reduces the requirement for melee hit-capping to 230 hit rating if you're a draenei or have one in your group. (This is group-only buff, not a raidwide buff.)
  • 26.23 hit rating = +1% chance to hit with spells. For our purposes, this only applies to Righteous Defense, Hand of Reckoning, and Exorcism.
    • Against a raid boss, spells have a base 17% chance to miss. It appears that some raid bosses may have an artificially reduced resistance rate to taunting spells such as RD and HoR, particularly bosses where frequent taunting is necessary, but this shouldn't be counted on.
    • The Draenei racial aura also applies to spells, as do the Misery and Improved Faerie Fire debuffs (+3% to hit with spells, only one of these can be present).
    • The Glyph of Righteous Defense reduces the miss chance of Righteous Defense by 8%.
    • It's not worth going through all the combinations of buffs and debuffs and the hit rating required to cap spells for each, but a few are worth noting:
      • If you have no other buffs and no RD glyph, 446 hit rating is required to reach the hit cap for RD.
      • If you have the RD glyph, only 236 hit rating is required to cap RD. This is less than the hit rating required to hit-cap melee attacks, so once you reach the melee hit cap, the glyph will safely put you over the top for RD as well.
      • If you really want to cap RD without using a glyph slot, the best possible case is to have a Draenei around (+1%), and to have Improved Faerie Fire or Misery up on the mob (+3% hit bonus, only one can apply). This reduces the miss chance to 13%, which would only require 341 hit rating to cap (111 more than the melee hit cap.)
• Expertise Rating
  • 8.10 expertise rating = +1 expertise (As with defense, this can be confusing, so be careful.)
  • Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be parried or dodged by 0.25% each. Hence, each point of expertise reduces the total chance for your attacks to be avoided by 0.50% (until the target's dodge chance reaches zero.)
  • 32.79 expertise rating = -1% dodge and -1% parry for your attacks.
  • Human racial bonuses give +3 expertise when using maces or swords (-0.75% dodge and -0.75% parry). This bonus is worth approximately 24 points of expertise rating.
  • The Dwarf racial bonus gives +5 expertise when using maces (-1.25% dodge and -1.25% parry). This bonus is worth approximately 41 points of expertise rating.
  • The Combat Expertise talent gives +6 expertise. This is worth 49 points of expertise rating.
  • Expertise will affect normal (white) melee attacks as well as Hammer of the Righteous (a parry is reported as "Deflect").
  • Expertise will not affect Shield of Righteousness, Righteous Defense, Avenger's Shield, or Judgements, because these cannot be parried or deflected.
  • Since parries by bosses hasten their next attack (using the same mechanic as for players who parry), expertise can be useful for reducing this effect and preventing damage spikes.
  • Prinsea: "The estimated dodge cap is at 6.5%, which would require 26 expertise or 214 expertise rating to achieve. Removing all parries would almost certainly require much more than this, as boss parry rates ranged from 11% - 15%, but the dodge cap could serve as a decent point of reference until we get more WWSes and such for confirmation of the parry cap."
• Crit Rating
  • 45.91 crit rating = 1% chance for a critical strike with all attacks and spells.
  • All critical strikes for Prot paladin offensive abilities except Exorcism (and possibly HoR?) do 200% of normal damage.
  • Critical heals do 150% of normal healing, or 195% with the Touched by the Light talent.
  • Crits are fun (especially with Shield of Righteousness) but crit rating is generally not an efficient tanking stat. Hit rating is much better, as it increases your threat more efficiently and makes your threat output more reliable as well.
• Haste Rating
  • 32.79 haste rating = 1% haste. This increases autoattack speed by 1%, reduces the cast time of spells by 1%, and reduces the global cooldown triggered by all spells (including instant-cast spells) by 1%. This does not affect the global cooldown triggered by special melee attacks.
  • While it's always nice to be swinging faster, this is not very useful for a prot paladin, since for the most part they're limited by cooldowns on key abilities rather than by the global cooldown or melee swing speed.
  • In theory, it's possible that a large amount of haste might reduce the global cooldown enough to allow a greater variety of ability rotations, and potentially more threat. However, this seems unlikely to be worthwhile, since prot paladins generally produce plenty of threat already, and there are other stats that can more efficiently improve threat output.
• Resilience Rating
  • 94.27 resilience rating = -1% chance of taking a critical hit with any kind of attack, -2% damage done by critical hits against you, and -1% reduced damage done by players against you.
  • Resilience is almost exclusively a PvP stat. While resilience is more efficient than defense for eliminating critical hits (123 points of defense vs 94 points of resilience to get -1% crit), defense also provides a large amount of avoidance while resilience doesn't. The reduction in spell crit provided by resilience is useless in PvE because mobs can't crit with spells, and the reduction in critical damage is meaningless since a tank will (hopefully!) be immune to crits from mobs in the first place.
  • Nonetheless, it may be useful to use resilience for tanking on a situational basis:
    • When first gearing up for serious tanking, resilience gear may be useful as a temporary stop-gap measure to eliminate crits while you collect gear with enough defense rating.
    • Fights that require magic resistance may make it more difficult to reach crit-immunity through defense alone, and a few pieces of PvP gear may be helpful in keeping crit-immunity.
    • In cases where you need to tank a not-too-dangerous mob early in a fight and then switch to DPS or healing after that mob dies, PvP gear with high stamina and resilience may be useful. However, this is a role generally better-suited to a Ret or Holy paladin than a Prot paladin.

Other Stats

• Armor
  • Armor reduces all incoming physical damage. While it does not work on magic attacks, it is guaranteed to mitigate all incoming physical damage. It does not rely on "chance" effects like blocking or avoidance, and it works even when you're stunned or otherwise incapacitated. Armor is your most reliable damage mitigation. The amount of incoming physical damage mitigated by your armor can be seen by mousing over the armor stat on your character sheet; this number is usually referred to as the damage reduction, or DR, and is expressed as a percentage.
  • There is some confusion about "diminishing returns" on armor. The DR given by armor follows a diminishing-return curve, so the higher your DR is, the more armor is required to increase it by 1%. However, the value of each extra point of DR increases as your DR increases. For example, consider an attack that does 10,000 physical damage before armor is considered:
    • If your armor DR is 50% and you increase it to 51%, the damage done by the attack is reduced from 5,000 to 4,900, a 2% reduction.
    • If your armor DR is 60% and you increase it to 61%, the damage done by the attack is reduced from 4,000 to 3,900, a 2.5% reduction.
    So, even though your DR% will increase more slowly as you add more and more armor, each extra point of armor is providing roughly the same relative benefit. Hence, increasing your armor is always worthwhile. (For a more detailed explanation with math and such, see Quigon's Protection Warrior Guide.)
  • The important thing to remember is that while your character sheet shows the changes in the absolute value of your DR, your healers will see the relative change in your DR. For example, if you go from 60.0% DR to 64.0% DR, your character sheet only shows a 4% increase, but your healers will notice you taking 10% less damage. (Actually they'll see even more than that when blocks are factored in.)
  • Shields have a disproportionately large amount of armor compared to other armor pieces. Hence, almost any shield from a higher tier of loot than the one you currently have will probably be an upgrade, even if the other stats aren't quite what you'd like. Even a shield with caster stats on it may be a mitigation upgrade compared to a lower-tier tanking shield. (Obviously however, you should respect the resto/elemental shamans and holy paladins in your raid regarding caster shields.)
  • There is a cap on armor DR at 75%. However, this value is rarely seen in normal practice, and can only be achieved through the use of multiple stacked buffs (Improved Lay on Hands, Inspiration, armor potions, etc). In general, unbuffed armor DR values for plate-wearing tanks in endgame gear in TBC were between 60% and 65%.
  • The following table shows the returns for adding additional armor at a few different DR levels. Note that the additional reduction in damage taken is always relative to the current incoming damage (before blocking).

    Armor	DR%	DR% w/ +100 armor	DR% w/ +1% armor
    16594	50.00%	50.15% (0.30% reduction)	50.25% (0.50% reduction)
    24891	60.00%	60.10% (0.25% reduction)	60.24% (0.60% reduction)
    38719	70.00%	70.05% (0.18% reduction)	70.21% (0.70% reduction)

• Block Value
  • Each point of block value causes your blocks to absorb an extra point of damage, and causes your Shield of Righteousness to deal an extra point of damage. However, the increased ShR damage starts to show diminishing returns once your (buffed) block value exceeds 2400, and additional block value no longer increases ShR damage at all once your block value exceeds 2760.
  • Block value is increased 30% by the Redoubt talent.
  • Note that strength also increases block value at a rate of 2 str = 1 blkval. If you're interested solely in increasing block value, items with direct block value bonuses are more efficient than items with strength. However, if you're interested in damage and/or threat generation, strength is more efficient overall since strength increases the damage done by other abilities as well (via AP). Overall, pieces with both strength and block value usually give you the most bang for your buck.
  • Blocking is the last mitigation effect applied to incoming damage. Since armor is applied before block value, increases in armor also increase the fraction of total damage you block as well.

The Hit Table

It's often assumed by casual observers that the different kinds of avoidance are checked in sequence, e.g. first the server checks to see if the mob misses you; if it doesn't miss then the server checks to see if you parry; if you don't parry then the server checks for a dodge, etc. This makes intuitive sense, but it's not the way things actually work.

What actually happens is the server makes a single "roll of the dice" to determine what happens on an attack, and all your avoidance chances, as well as your chance to be crit, are applied at the same time to that one roll. So for example, if a tank is naked and using a trash can lid as a shield, and has a 5% chance to be missed, 5% chance to dodge, 5% chance to parry and 5% chance to block, the server constructs a hit table that looks like this:

01 - 05: miss (5%)
06 - 10: parry (5%)
11 - 15: dodge (5%)
16 - 20: block (5%)
21 - 95: hit (75%)
96 -100: crit (5%)

... and then a single random number between 1 and 100 determines the outcome.

If a tank has a 10% chance to be missed, a 10% chance to dodge, 10% chance to parry, 10% chance to block, and has enough defense to be immune to critical hits, the table looks like this:

01 - 10: miss (10%)
11 - 20: parry (10%)
21 - 30: dodge (10%)
31 - 40: block (10%)
41 -100: hit (60%)

If the tank has Holy Shield active, the chance of a block goes up to 40% and the chance of a regular hit goes down to 30. If the tank has Holy Shield active and Redoubt procs, the chance of a block is 70%, and it is impossible for an attack to hit without being blocked.

The important thing to be aware of here is that the more of each kind of avoidance you have, the more valuable the rest of your avoidance becomes. Every increase in your chance to parry, dodge, or block comes directly out of your chance to take a hit.

Oggie: "I don't have quite enough data or armor pieces to really verify this, but it seems like dodge/parry diminish at the rate they improve in value, so x dodge rating is always worth the same amount of incoming damage. Aka, like armor, avoidance stats can now be measured at a constant value for time-to-live."

Prinsea: "Oggie is correct in that you can basically consider avoidance as a constant increase to your TTL with these diminishing return mechanics. Technically, the fact that miss, parry and dodge are on different DRs can mean that it may be possible to reach unhittable (as galzhohar pointed out), but there is nothing to suggest that the itemization exists to support this."



Quick and Dirty Level 80 Gear Set

This is a list aimed at tanks starting leveling in Northrend who need to put together a set of tanking gear quickly, but can also be useful for people looking for pieces in a slot or two. All the items listed here are blue quality, and can be obtained through quests, reputation, or crafting. Drops are not included because the intent is to give a list of gear that can be obtained quickly.

1. Starting at 71-74, do all Wyrmrest quests at the Wyrmrest temple. Once you've completed these, purchase a Wyrmrest Accord tabard and put it on. (Don't let the first level 80 instance catch you by surprise.) Continue wearing the tabard, and do the daily quest at Wyrmrest temple every day as you level until you reach at least Revered with the Wyrmrest Accord.
2. At level 74, get yourself a [Tempered Saronite Belt] off the Auction House or have someone make you one. Buy and attach an [Eternal Belt Buckle] to it, and socket it with a [Thick Sun Crystal] for a total of 69 defense rating. Optionally, purchase other pieces in the Tempered Saronite "set" to use as leveling gear or as fallback pieces in case you can't get one of the recommended items before you start raiding or doing heroics.
3. Head to Zul'Drak as soon as you can. (level 74 or so) and find a partner to do the "Wanted: Ragemane's Flipper" quest at given the first Argent Crusade camp. Get [Crescent of Brooding Fury] for completing the quest.
4. Still in Zul'Drak, follow quests to Argent Stand (the major Argent Crusade base in the zone). Do quests there to improve your Argent Crusade rep, including the dailies. Continue to do these daily quests every day as you level until you reach Revered with the Argent Crusade. (There are more quests that give Argent Crusade rep than Wyrmrest rep, so don't take off the Wyrmrest tabard until you're finished with Wyrmrest rep.)
5. Move back to the west edge of Zul'Drak and do the quests from the Argent Crusade Forward Camp for more AC rep. Also do Stefan's quests from Ebon Watch to acquire [Betrayer's Choker]. Socket it with a [Thick Sun Crystal] for a total of 29 defense rating.
6. When you reach an appopriate level (76-ish) start keeping your eyes open for a Gundrak group to complete the "For Posterity" quest and get [Solid Platinum Band].
7. When you go to train at level 77, get a [Saronite Bulwark] off the Auction House.
8. When you go to train at level 78, get some [Daunting Handguards] off the Auction House. Once back in Northrend, go to Wyrmrest Temple and purchase [Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions], and then go to the Argent Crusade camp in the southeast corner of Icecrown and purchase [Special Issue Legplates]. Apply a [Jormungar Leg Armor] to the legplates and socket them with a [Stalwart Huge Citrine] for a total of 87 defense rating..
   Also buy an Argent Crusade tabard and have it handy to switch when you do this.
9. Starting at level 78, keep your eyes peeled for groups for Halls of Stone to do the Brann Bronzebeard event and get [Pauldrons of Reconnaissance], and for an Oculus group to do the quests inside for [Bracers of Reverence].
10. Optionally, also keep your eyes peeled for Utguard Pinnacle groups; the instance will give you Rep with whatever faction's tabard you're wearing, and the plate chest reward from the quest in the instance is a useful intermediate and backup piece if you have trouble completing Wyrmrest rep.
11. Starting from the Argent Crusade camp where you purchased the legplates and tabard, complete the quest chain given by Tirion Fordring through the building of the new tower, and obtain [The Crusader's Resolution].
12. Follow the breadcrumb quests to your faction's airship and do quests for Thassarian (Alliance) or Koltira Deathweaver (Horde) to establish the new Ebon Blade base at the Shadow Vault. If/when you reach Honored, purchase [Toxin-Tempered Sabatons].
13. When you reach Revered with the Argent Crusade, purchase [Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector] and apply it to your helm.
14. When you reach level 80 and Revered with the Wyrmrest Accord, purchase [Breastplate of the Solemn Council].
15. As soon as possible, go to K3 in Storm Peaks and follow the chain starting with the quest "They Took Our Men!" until you get access to the Hodir quartermaster. Then begin working on dailies and other quests until you reach at least Honored with the Sons of Hodir and purchase [Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle] and apply it to your tanking shoulders. This does not need to be done to become uncrittable with the recommended set if you follow the instructions, but you should start on it as soon as you can find the time in order to work your way up to Exalted for the epic inscription.
16. If you have not already, obtain the following enchants:
    • A +12 defense rating enchant to cloak.
    • A +22 defense rating enchant to chest.
    • A +40 stamina enchant to bracers.
    • A +20 hit rating enchant to gloves
    • A +22 stamina enchant to boots.
    • A [Titanium Weapon Chain] to weapon.
    • A +20 defense rating enchant to shield.
    In total, you should have an additional 54 defense rating from enchants.

Alternatives:

1. [Blade of the Empty Void] from a quest chain at Ebon Hold involving the nearbly Vykrul village. (Lose 7 defense rating.)
2. [Reinforced Titanium Neckguard] from quests against the Scarlet Onslaught. Requires a group to finish the chain. (Gain 9 defense rating.)
3. [Tempered Saronite Shoulders], crafted. You may actually prefer these outright. (Lose 14 defense rating.)
4. [Daunting Legplates], craftable. (Gain 13 defense rating accounting for the lost gem.)
5. [Tempered Saronite Bracers], crafted. (Gain 14 defense rating.)
6. [Tempered Saronite Helm], crafted. (Gain 23 defense rating.)
7. [Silver-Plated Battlechest]: From the "Junk in My Trunk" quest in Utguard Pinnacle. (Lose 2 defense rating.) Also [Tempered Saronite Breastplate], crafted. (Lose 20 defense rating)

If you've obtained all the recommended except the Sons of Hodir inscription, you'll have 705 defense rating, which is 16 more than required to be uncrittable. Depending on exactly what items you end up with you may have to alter your gems a bit, but it should be possible to make a viable tanking set from just about any combination of recommended and alternate items.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Viduus4

I've been a member-in-lurking here for quite some time, but this is my first post.

Previously, per data analyzed / reverse-engineered by Qixxen (this thread), Cathela (OP, this thread) and Whitetooth (Combat Ratings thread) I had put together a very rudimentary spreadsheet to tell me my hit table after DR.

Let me elaborate:

When I look at my stats I want to know *exactly* where I stand after diminishing returns. It really gets under my skin not that DR is there, but that we have to guess at our stats. I also use(d) this tool to help out up-and-coming paladin tanks figure out what they need to prioritize. There were some... manual compensations in the formula due to unexpected behavior in Excel, but otherwise it worked well enough. The goal is of course to reach 100% minimum after DR.

So I suppose now the reason for this post is I wanted to know if someone would be willing (egads, for each tanking class? It took me 3 hours to build this one!) to rebuild something more... accurate and dynamic, comparable to what I'm linking to here:

AvoidanceDR.xlsx

 

• emptyrepublic

I'm not sure if it's necessarily worth putting in the guide, but it's at least worth a mention that it is no longer necessary to have ShR right after a Judgement if you are stuck with the badge libram (Libram of Obstruction). The duration of the buff has been extended to 10 seconds. This means if you stick to 6/9 closely all your ShR hits should have the benefit of the extra BV.

"A 1992 Dateline expose revealed that GMC trucks were dangerous when explosives were strapped to the gas tank and then detonated."
See story.

 

Ranjurm

You should have never delayed ShoR use to follow a judgement as doing so is a net TPS loss.

Remember if changing shoulder enchants drops you below 540 defense it weakens your AD cooldown heal


For the guide:

BoSanc damage reduction does stack with a disc priests and has been that way since they were implemented though they shouldn't. Same with Dev Aura and Stoneskin totem.

this addon Protection Is Surprisingly Stupendous aka PISS. Great lightweight addon for new paladins who still need to get a feel for the 96969 rotation. Baised upon the ret serious help in timing mod aka Shit.

Glyph of RD affects HoR in 3.2 as well.

I would refrain from calling expertise a very good stat for reducing burst damage for the following: Paladins have the lowest attack rate of parrible attacks (far lower, nearly half), high starting expertise, parries or parry haste disabled on many bosses, additional targets in front of the mob are a much larger contribution whether the be other tanks or stray dps and finally avoidance is far more likely to prevent burst than expertise.

SoR's use as snap threat is reduced in 3.2 by SoV proccing on partial stacks.

More comments to come.

 

Ranjurm

delete

 

Junlex

According to the first post of the retribution 3.2 thread, there is a "hidden strike" that accompanies every white swing or HotR that lands, and it is this hidden strike that applies/refreshes the SoV DoT if it lands. It follows melee combat table mechanics, including the ability to miss/be dodged/be parried. If a crusader strike/divine storm/hammer of the righteous is used or there is a 5-stack of the SoV DoT up and you white swing, the 33% damage strike procs as well, and this cannot be avoided if the attack that triggered it connects. I can't find where this was originally discussed though.

 

Wrathblood

Ranjurm, while I agree that attempted to switch from defense-based uncrittability to resilience-based uncrittability is generally a very bad plan (mostly because of the huge hit you'll take to your avoidance), the loss of AD-generated healing is a fairly small part of it. I'm at a loss to find another useful piece of tanking gear/enchant/gems that have resilience, so I don't think there's too much temptation to follow down that road.

I believe others have done the math and swapping from the Hodir shoulder inscription to the gladiator one reduces your AD healing from 30% to ~29.15%, which seems managable.

 

Gunn

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the data, did the hit cap for Protection change this patch?

 

Soralin

I'm noticing in RAWR 2.2.11 in the Protadin Module that my hit rating of 264 appears as 99.85% chance to hit a level 83 mob. Unless I'm missing something major then Rawr's bugged and the hit cap hasn't changed (remains 263 for melee attacks)

 

gospel

Am I to understand dodge/sta is still better than agi/sta in order to meet red sockets?

Jesus: "I can offer you eternal Salvation."
Disciples: "Can I get Might or Kings instead?"

http://www.xckd.com/318/

 

Tharia

This point is highly debatable. Dodge gives more avoidance than agi and therefore takes away more damage from the tank, but agi is armor (thus effective health) and gives some threat. Therefore I prefer a shifting dreadstone for meta activation.
In most gear setups it's only one gem anyway, so no big deal either way. Rest is generally better with all stam, even moreso with epic gems (some exceptions exist probably).

 

◊ Cathela

Are you aware that the TankPoints mod does the hit-table calculations in-game, including DR? ("Open Calculator" from the TankPoints tab in the character pane.) The TP calculator also lets you play around with adding and subtracting stats and rating points to see the effect of gear changes.

The author of TankPoints also maintains this thread, which explains the DR math.

At any rate, do you mind if I link to your spreadsheet from the guide?

Regarding BoSanct, can someone confirm this for 3.2?

As far as mods, that's the next section I want to add to the guide. I don't want the list to get too long, but feel free (everyone) to suggest mods you find indispensible.

The only piece of resilience gear I've used in WotLK was the AP-proc trinket from wintergrasp for a high-dps set for 3-minute Patchwerk. That's sort of by definition the kind of situation where you would really hope you don't need the AD heal. Still, the point about resil-instead-of-defense weakening the AD heal is a good one, and I'll add it to the guide.

Regarding the shoulder inscriptions, you potentially lose a bit of your AD heal if you drop defense below 540, but you also gain roughly 380 total health from the PvP inscription, which increases the size of the heal. Let me try the EH calcs:

At 40,000 hp, 30% AD heal:

• EH Outside of AD: 26,000 hp = 26,000 EH
• EH Inside AD + AD heal: (14,000 hp + 12,000 hp)/0.70 = 26,000 hp/0.70 = 37,140 EH.
• Total EH: 63,140

At 40,380 hp, 29.15% AD heal:

• EH Outside of AD: 26k hp = 26,247 EH
• EH Inside AD + AD heal: (14,133 hp + 11,771 hp)/0.70 = 25,904 hp/0.70 = 37,006 EH.
• Total EH: 63,253

So the net gain in EH from the switch is 113 hp, in the worst possible case where you were at exactly 540 defense before the switch.

EDIT:
Well, the prospects are certainly better for block-tanking than they were in 3.1, though whether they're good enough to make it viable is still in question.

EDIT AGAIN:

Actually I think expertise is more important now than it was before, since SoV now adds another parry opportunity to every autoattack and every HoR. Even with a slow weapon it's still going to average out to more than one parry opportunity per second, which is on par with or greater than what any other tanking class is going to face.

Expertise also doesn't suffer from diminishing returns, it can eliminate parries entirely -- high starting expertise actually helps with this -- and it also improves threat. I'm not going to suggest that everyone make it a priority to cap out expertise and be parry-immune, but yeah, it's a very good stat.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Degenerate

I would like to suggest Parry/Sta as a good option now that Dodge and Parry Ratings are on a level. Parry has the added benefit that when you parry, your next attack is parry-hasted, and so can contribute to threat at a minor level, wheras Dodge is purely avoidance.

I haven't done any maths on the diminishing returns effects to both, but personally I think at present I will get more from Parry especially as most tanks have more Dodge than Parry so Dodge is closer to the diminishing returns point?

 

thedopefishlives

In a word, no. Parry still gets worse diminishing returns than dodge; the only difference is that now we get equal pre-DR amounts of dodge and parry from ratings. Parry rating has basically gone from "completely useless" to "mostly useless".